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“He had an approach of re-setting his body after the injury. He wanted to cleanse it,with clean eating and starting again to come back stronger inside and outside.
“A lot of athletes look at fasting as a means of building the body back to be stronger. I worked with a lot of Russian pole-vaulters,and they would fast for a month every year because the body recovered stronger. So,there has been a plan for Dusty to rejuvenate and cleanse and come back stronger.
“He had missed so few games over his career,and then he missed this big chunk. The hope is this forced break from football will help him regenerate and give him games at the back end of his career.
“He was not due back until next Monday but has been coming in for weeks. He came out today while main training[for the young players] was on and did his running and conditioning program. I thought he looked really good.”
The incident that stopped the Brownlow medallist and three-time Norm Smith medallist looked innocuous.
“You look back on it,and it is hard to work out how he did it. He collided with Mitch Robinson,and it must have been his hip that caught him. Dusty is very resilient,he gets knocked around a lot,he might grimace,but then he just plays on so if he is hurting something is not right,” Burge said.
The Tigers initially thought Martin had just been badly winded and would be ok. That was what Burge told Luke Hodge when the Channel 7 boundary rider asked him at three-quarter time of the Lions game how Martin was.
“I said he is winded[and] will be back on,then 20 seconds later the doctors came out and said we have to send him to hospital now,we think he has lacerated his kidney.”
The initial prognosis was that he would make a full recovery,but it would be slow. Richmond does not plan for Martin to join contact drills at training until the middle of January.
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After a week in hospital in Queensland he spent another two weeks in isolation in Victoria. He felt better but had lost a lot of weight and was under strict instructions to do nothing and be careful of what he ate.
Getting to the point of running again this past week has been slow and painstaking.
“He lost quite a bit more than 10 kilos;it wasn’t 20 kilos as was reported somewhere,but it was a lot more than 10 kilos. He has put on more than 12[kilos] and he is probably about two kilos under his playing weight.” Martin normally plays at 92-93 kilograms.
“Players had an exemption to come in and use the gym here,but he was not allowed to get a sweat up. Even doing five calf raises,we had to check with the doctors,is that OK? How many can he do? He was allowed to walk,but we had to ask,how fast can he walk? How long for?
“It was not so much about sweating but if you are sweating you are working your abdomen and putting yourself under some stress,and we didn’t want that. It was a slow process,but we wanted to be very conservative with it and Dusty was very patient.
“He feels great. He is very happy to be back running again. He is still down a few kilos so running is a bit easier. He will get that run in his legs and the strength power and muscle will come.”
Meantime,Richmond on Monday announced an operating profit of $2.5 million for last season. The profit was generated from revenue of $73.8 million.