May’s hammy had ‘6cm tear’

MELBOURNE defender Steven May played in Saturday night’s grand final just two weeks after suffering what would ordinarily be considered a seven-week injury.

May was told the full extent of his injury only in the aftermath of the season decider, with word filtering through to him he had a 6cm tear in his right hamstring.

The 29-year-old looked sore at times during the game but still played 93 per cent game time and held dangerous Bulldogs opponent Aaron Naughton to a single goal in the thumping 74-point win.

May said he realised his hamstring was still not right when he lunged for a secondquarter ground ball but tried to block the pain out of his mind.

“I just thought I’ve got an hour to get through and I can fix the hammy in the off-season,” May said. “I was glad I was able to still not be a liability out there, able to still try to have some sort of influence. It was all heart, really … I’ll deal with this in the next few days.”

Coach Simon Goodwin said on Sunday he “couldn’t not pick” May after this year’s AllAustralian full back passed all his fitness tests in the week leading up to the grand final.

“I have trust in the medical department,” Goodwin said on Channel 9. “We got the scan and we had a look at what it looked like. They made a pretty clear decision they were going to treat it clinically.

Every step of the way he passed all his tests. All his strength markers, all his stuff was right on track. He trained. He didn’t miss a beat. In the end you couldn’t not pick him.

“He trained fully on Wednesday and Friday. It was like, ‘Well, we have to take this risk’. But if he hadn’t trained properly Wednesday, we wouldn’t have picked him.”

Small forward Charlie Spargo also entered the game under a cloud after suffering an ankle injury at training.

The coaches tried to get medical sub James Jordon on the ground in the last quarter but were knocked back by doctors, with James Harmes’ cramping too insignificant an injury to activate Jordon.