Nina’s horror Friday the 13th

It was a dark day for sport in Australia already, but when Nina Morrison failed to get up on the wing after her knee bent and twisted laterally after a kick the figurative clouds really descended over Geelong.

Having ruptured her anterior cruciate ligament in the lead up to Round 2 of her debut year in 2019, one of the league’s most admired and talented players had put in a mountain of work to rejoin her team-mates this season.

Coming off of a best on ground performance last week, Morrison had been building her game nicely when it all came crashing down again. Stretchered off in front of a stunned crowd, there was but a slim hope that she may have avoided the worst-case scenario of another year of treatment, recovery and rebuilding.

Even though most of the chatter in the days and weeks ahead will be about coronavirus-related issues, the image of a crumpled Nina Morrison on the turf won’t fade fast from the collective mind of the AFLW family.

If the terrible fate of another ACL injury comes to pass, surely that will spur on all those tasked with researching and developing methods and practices to better prevent this scourge even more.