The Shoguns physios will be hard at it this week

By Duncan Wood
May 22 2002

The Bristol injury list was pretty long going into the Leicester game. We seem to have come through that one unscathed so, with 10 days until the Northampton game, the physios will be working full time.

With about a week and a half to go, the preparations for the Zurich Premiership playoff semi final against Northampton are already underway. Th eplayers report back to training today after 2 days off.

No-one is going to be busier in the next few days than the physios, Keith James and Donna Sanderson. Bristol's injury list going into the Leicester game was fairly lengthy. Dean Ryan was denied the services of 12 players.

It goes without saying that some of those absentees have no chance of making the semi final. Shane Drahm will be missing with a medial knee ligament injury. Adam Vander is still recovering from the car crash he was involved in back in March.

However, I understand that Paul Johnstone was an outside possibility of getting back in time for the Leicester game last weekend and is now back in training. There is a chance that he'll be back in contention for the semi final.

Similarly, according to the Evening Post yesterday there is a good chance that Garath Archer, Brendon Daniel and Alex Cadwallader will be available for selection.

Keith and Donna have obviously got their work cut out in the next few days. If they can get anybody else up and running in the meantime it would be a welcome bonus. And we'll all just have to hope that no-one else pulls up with a problem in training!