Finding the injury anti-venom

As he reflects on the past two seasons leading the Kenfrost Homes Cairns Taipans, there’s a major challenge that Head Coach Adam Forde is looking to overcome.

“Recruiting talent has never been an issue, it’s just keeping it on the floor,” explained Head Coach Adam Forde.

Suffering four season-ending injuries across the 2025-26 campaign, and with 82% of his last three rosters experiencing at least one injury, player availability is a major focus for the Taipans’ leader.

“So, our last two seasons, we’ve had 70% of player availability for games, and obviously that directly impacts results.

“It’s a combination of things in what we can do to recruit talent and then keep talent on the court to be available for those games.

“And we’re looking to increase the resources available to get the guys actively recovered and keep them fresh for the court.”

From increasing staff availability, to tinkering training schedules and now with a new recovery studio, Forde is leaving no stone unturned in his quest to keep his players on the floor.

“Another thing that management has done a great job of is we fully decked out a portion of our old office space to recovery. So, there’s boots, sauna, hot and cold baths, and massage, and having those things available.

“And now we’re looking to increase the hours of our high-performance team, and we’re looking to increase the hours of our medical team.

“Because with success, the best ability is availability, and I think we saw that last season with the two grand final teams being in the mid 90s in terms of what their players have been available for.”

Explaining that high player availability and on court success are often tied together, Forde has searched through data from past seasons to find the way forward.

Comparing the final season standings to how teams performed with player availability, there was very little movement with club’s who kept their stars on court, with the Head Coach even drawing parallels to Cairns’ last post-season push.

“If I cast our minds back to when we made the run into the semi-finals, that year we had an 89% player availability, and if you remove Keanu Pinder from that we had 94% of player availability.

“And then even with that final’s series, Shannon Scott was ruled out with a hamstring, Keanu wasn’t available with the orbital fracture and Tahjere McCall played but with a dislocated shoulder.

“But that’s generally the KPI required to get to the postseason, that you need to roughly be between that 92 to 98% of player availability, which obviously Adelaide were at the top of the table last year with 98% of players available.”

Though he’s determined to overcome the injury woes faced over the last few seasons, Forde has kept his faith in the system that delivered their last post-season appearance.

For him, the focus is purely on reducing any need for luck and instead building a team that will compete.

“The interesting thing is that the model works, and the last couple of years we’ve had to rely on a large portion of luck to get us over the finish line and the idea of guys relatively going through the season injury free.

“And that’s the biggest strides when we sit here and go, the model works and now we’re putting things in place that while we’re not at the level maybe of the major city teams, we’re definitely closing the gap.”

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