So Graham Arnold has again reaffirmed his claims that the poor performance of the Mariners against the white hot Roar side a week and a half ago was a case of the team being "rusty". Well Graham I have a wire brush and some Rust Go in my garage if you want to try and scrub the boys up a bit before Sunday. Seeing as the team have not played a game since that poor performance 10 days ago I am not sure if there is much else that will get the rust off before Perth may benefit from a continued oxidisation of the Central Coast squad. If you want to see how rusty the team had gotten just check out the hair on Amini.

So will the team be ready for this week's game in Sydney?

I know one thing for sure they had better be as this will be Ian Ferguson's first match against the Mariners after taking over Peth. And Fergie showed last year he liked to try and get his teams really amped for the games against the Mariners.

One thing that does worry me at the moment is the injury toll that the Mariners appear to be carrying at the moment especially given that over the long rest period the squad actually lost players. Most teams in professional sports tend to have players healing and returning to their squads after a week off, but the Mariners have achieved the opposite. During the down period Brad Porter has suffered a pretty serious knee injury and the great white hope Perez has had a reoccurrence of the hamstring injury he had earlier in the season. So the Mariners squad was weakened considerably through the gathering rust on some players and injury to others (I mean Perez, not so much Porter as I honestly believe there are juniors who will offer this squad far more).

So I have to ask is there an issue with the training practices and processes at the Mariners?

Other teams in professional sports have suffered such issues over the years and it does not always mean there is a failure of the training staff or the coaches. Sometimes it can be a reflection of where the teams train. The Mariners themselves experienced this a few years ago when the team was training on a track at Mingara which was too hard. So what has gone wrong over this down period? We have most of the team appearing to be off the boil now this may be either due to a fitness issue (over trained or under trained) or it may be due to a lack of concentration. Then we have other players being injured during training and match preparation. I struggle to remember any of the Mariners players who have become unavailable this year due to an injury in a match this season. But we can point to a number of players who have been injured during training sessions.

Now I know it is not really possible to avoid all injuries such as knee and joint injuries during training as mostly it is bad luck when they occur. The worst injuries for players can and do occur when they are doing totally normal things and simply twist the wrong way. But the most concerning of injuries is the Perez situation, this is a soft tissue injury that has reoccurred a number of times over the season. This kind of injury can be directly influenced by the training a player is told to perform and when they are told to perform. If a player is brought back too early or pushed too hard these kinds of injuries can become chronic issues. So is there a problem with the Mariners training staff? I know that Andrew Clark is a very qualified professional and obviously dedicated to the team having been a player and the head of fitness and sports science but has he been driving the team too hard?

We saw a report from Alex Wilkinson over the bye period about walking into training and seeing the set up Clark had prepared, his first response was a groan. Given the team had a week off were they pushed too hard too early?

I am more than willing to give Andrew the benefit of the doubt at this stage of the season, but I think it is something that the management should be tracking over the rest of this season. If these injuries are here now then how are our injuries going to proceed as the team is going to be playing 18 games in the next 13 weeks (plus finals if we continue our good start to the season). We have a number of players who will need to be nursed and handled carefully over this time, in particular Perez with his dodgy hammy and Zwaanswijk who is almost ready for his first Zimmer frame (sorry had to through in an age group somewhere). These two guys in particular are very important to the success of the Mariners campaign this year.