Fresh details emerge over Darcy Parish's ‘friction' with Essendon over pre-season injury management
7NEWS chief AFL reporter Mitch Cleary exclusively revealed the fresh development, which centres around Parish's back problem in the pre-season.
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Parish struggled with the back complaint throughout the pre-season and after consultation with club staff, he underwent an initial procedure.
But there was lingering pain following that and Parish decided to consult an independent third party, which 'raised eyebrows', according to Cleary.
'December, has a back injury, works with the Essendon medicos to go under the knife for a procedure on his back. That doesn't go well and he's in pain for several weeks off the back of it,' Cleary said on The Agenda Setters.
'He then seeks independent third-party advice around his back injury, which caused some friction and raised eyebrows internally with the club.
'On the back of that second opinion, they found the initial procedure didn't go to plan.'
Parish ended up undergoing a second procedure in Queensland, which fixed the issue.
St Kilda great Nick Riewoldt said Parish's decision to go seek his own advice was very unusual.
'That's not common that a player would do that,' he said.
Parish, a 2021 All-Australian, ended up missing the first 11 matches due to back and calf injuries.
He played his first game of the season in Round 13 against Carlton, but only managed two more games before he was sidelined again with another calf injury.
The revelation surrounding Parish is the latest in a long list of issues for the club.
The Bombers have been hit hard by injuries this year, which has prompted a probe into the alarming situation.
Nic Martin (knee) and Will Setterfield (foot) were the latest two to be ruled out for the season, joining a long list of sidelined first-team regulars that includes Nick Bryan, Sam Draper, Jye Caldwell, Kyle Langford, Ben McKay, Harrison Jones, and Zach Reid.
Cleary last week reported that senior players were losing faith in the high-performance team that could lead to some potentially leaving the club.
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