""It has been a long football season. You would rather be out there that sitting in the stands,"" Solomon said from London where he is spending some time during the off-season. ""The knee feels fine so it is just a matter of getting some work into it and getting the confidence back.""
Essendon fitness coach John Quinn said there is no reason to think Solomon will be any different as a player upon his return. ""Occasionally players can lose some agility or speed but we have done everything possible to minimise that. There is really no way of telling until we see him flat out during pre-season but the signs are good.""
Quinn admitted the match committee had toyed with the idea of Solomon making a return for the 2002 finals' series. ""All the research shows that the sooner you come back from an ACL the more chance there is that you will re-injur it so we made a collective decision that for such a young player with so much football ahead of him it wasn't a reasonable risk to take. He might have returned but at what cost? He didn't have the base training behind him and his confidence may have suffered as a result - it was absolutely the right decision to make.""
""It will be great to have him back. He is basically a new recruit for us. It was just a mechanics injury - 56% of ACL's are non-contact injuries. They are just an unfortuate part of football. The averages say you have one each season but he is the first we have had in a while and hopefully the last.""
