The Suncorp Stadium surface has been given the tick of approval despite having hosted eight games across four days where a number of injuries took place.
This last round saw a number of big-name players go down with injury including Jack Bird and Latrell Mitchell, with a total of 19 injuries occurring over the weekend.
Raiders captain Josh Hodgson was one who spoke in favour of the Suncorp surface.
“You could obviously tell there had been a few games on there but it was all right. I had no problems with the surface, I thought it was pretty good,” Hodgson said.
“We’ve done the Magic Round in England and the conditions are worse over there in terms of the rain and the ground. It’s all down to the groundsmen and how much they can look after it on the night. They did a good job from the game yesterday to what it was like today. It’s never going to be perfect but I was happy with it.”
Injuries seem to be occurring with more regularity as the season rolls on, with the Magic Round seeing 13 players go down with non-concussion injuries.
Plenty of questions on how this stacks up against previous years/is this the worst injury toll ever, so tallied up the same round from 2018 (again via @FOXNRL). Unfortunately injuries are just part of the game #NRLMagicRound pic.twitter.com/doTlvlcaoc
— NRL PHYSIO (@nrlphysio) May 12, 2019
Up to this point in the season, 94 players have gone down with non-concussion injuries, up from 89 at the same point last year.
It’s hard to decipher what impact the Suncorp surface had on this week’s injury count because injuries are simply a part of the game, but with the count seemingly increasing questions will be asked about what can be done to try and reduce the number.
