The weirdest pre-season injuries in the AFL | photos

The dual premiership Crow gave new meaning to the phrase "don't try this at home" when, in the pre-season of 1992, he decided to walk over hot coals at an Adelaide training camp. That decision saw the star defender suffer first-degree burns to the soles of his feet and earn the nickname "Notso". However, he did play a practice match six days later so all's well that ends well.

The triple premiership ruckman has two nominations. Firstly, in October 2002 he impaled himself on a garden stake after falling from a tree as he attempted to put up a hammock in his backyard. And in late 2009, Ottens suffered tendon damage to his hand and needed stitches in his arm and leg after making contact with the propeller of a motorboat while waterskiing in Echuca.

Arguably the Brisbane Lions' greatest ever player, he proved to be a bit of a klutz when at home. The most dramatic example of this came following the 1998 season when he almost lost a finger while trying to attach a trailer to his car. He cut the digit so badly that it was reportedly only joined to his body by his skin.

The Greater Western Sydney veteran had a delayed start to his second pre-season with the Giants after somehow managing to rupture a tendon in his thumb a few months ago while reaching into a bag to grab his phone. The innocuous injury required surgery.

The Fremantle ruckman missed eight weeks of the 2014 pre-season after somehow injuring his knee while attending the Falls Festival in Lorne. It was never made public how exactly he damaged his posterior cruciate ligament, but one can hazard a guess and say that gangly 203cm tall men and dancing is a recipe for disaster.

In the pre-season of 2010, the then-Hawthorn ruckman needed treatment to burns on his back, arms and legs after he was knocked into a beach bonfire on the Gold Coast. All players love the idea of being "on fire", but that was taking things too far!

During an intra-club match in 2009 at Whitten Oval, the Essendon defender suffered an horrific lower leg injury which saw him break his fibula and dislocate his ankle. Amazingly, he returned to the playing field in round 12 that year but only managed a further 17 matches in the next two seasons before retiring at just 28 years of age. He admitted he never fully recovered from the injury.

In November 2001, the young Geelong midfielder made a fateful decision to jump from a ledge at a Lorne pub late at night. He proceeded to land awkwardly on the beach, badly injure his knee and miss the entire 2002 season. The promising Cat was never the same and played only another 21 games for the club before being delisted at the end of 2004.

Just after Christmas 2009, the Sydney superstar was out with some friends in his hometown of Melbourne when he tripped over a fence and fractured his cheekbone. He required surgery and, as a result, was unable to fly back to Sydney until the middle of January 2010.

In November 2013, the North Melbourne midfielder, who was then at Hawthorn, caught a bug while out hunting for geese in Darwin. This led to him contracting pneumonia and being placed in an induced coma for six days. Anderson said he may have got the illness after treading on something barefoot while he was in Howard Swamps.

Oddly - or not, considering the amount of time footballers spend standing in salty water - Archie Smith isn't the only victim of a stingray's barb. Jarrad Grant, in his former life as a Western Bulldog, suffered a nasty sting walking in the shallows of Port Melbourne beach in February 2008. By recently joining the Gold Coast Suns, he hasn't exactly reduced the odds of something similar happening again. Funnily enough, 'Stingrays' and 'Rays' were two nickname suggestions for the Gold Coast team before they settled on Suns.

On the eve of the 2015 opening round, Richmond defender David Astbury was at a bay beach session when he was stung badly enough to have minor surgery on his left foot, delaying his AFL return after a knee injury the previous season.