For full disclosure, I’ve only seen up to Season 4 of Game of Thrones and haven’t started the books yet. But today’s practice seems to have jumped right off of the pages of a possible soccer novel by George R. R. Martin. At the end of practice, the Fire had a total of 9 players missing or getting injured. All reports on today’s practice came from the Daily Herald’s Orrin Schwartz (and there will be a ton of links at the bottom of the page).

First, the good news was that both Brandon Vincent and John Goossens were on the side doing some light training. Both haven’t really been missed as Goose has been out the entire season and Vincent’s replacement has done well, but it’s good to see both of them making their way back onto the pitch. Other players who are still out from long-term injuries include Daniel Johnson who was ruled out just before the last game with an MCL sprain and Jorge Bava who is reportedly undergoing surgery for tendonitis on his elbow.

Before practice Orrin said that Dax McCarty and Michael Harrington had not made it to practice today due to being “ill”. “Ill” has multiple possible meanings, but we’re not going to talk about the semantics and just assume they’ve each got a slight cold. This would mean that they’d probably be okay for the game on Saturday, so there’s not much to worry about there.

Now for the in-practice injuries. First to go down was Johan Kappelhof who appeared to leave due to a hip or groin injury. Kap would later confirm that he was feeling some soreness in his groin and that he was just being cautious, but we may have to wait until a professional looks at it to say whether he’ll play. For now, he said he’s fine for Saturday.

Next was Juninho who would go off to the side to “stretch out”. By the use of terms I’m assuming that this is a leg injury and nothing has been confirmed yet about anything from him, so I don’t know whether he’d be okay for Saturday. The final injury was Matt Polster, but the only word used was “knock”, so I really don’t know what that could mean. Shouldn’t be too serious, but something to keep an eye on.

Official list of players who missed or dropped out of practice due to injury (in chronological order of injury):

• John Goossens, still recovering from ankle surgery
• Jorge Bava, getting surgery on elbow
• Brandon Vincent, still recovering from quad strain
• Daniel Johnson, still recovering from MCL sprain
• Dax McCarty, illness
• Michael Harrington, illness
• Johan Kappelhof, groin soreness
• Juninho, leg tightness
• Matt Polster, unknown

Unnecessary and incomplete lineup of those injured today:

Source Tweets on Today’s Practice (Follow the Adventure Yourself!):

So tell us what you think of this practice and all the injuries/possible injuries/possible returns. And a special thank you to Orrin for always being at practices to keep us uninformed up to date on team news.