Andrew Carrazzo admits his eight-week enforced lay-off with a calf strain wasn’t exactly ideal. But the seasoned 159-game Carlton vice-captain has been about the place long enough to know it could always be worse.

“It was hard, but the older I’ve got the more I’ve learned to put these things in perspective a little bit and realize how lucky I am with footy,” Carrazzo said prior to a weights session at Visy Park this week.

“I keep telling myself ‘I don’t know how much longer I’m going to play footy for’. I’m lucky to be contracted for another couple more years, but I don’t know how much longer my body’s going to let me go, so I’m just going to try to enjoy every minute of it for as long as I can even if I’m not feeling great, because I don’t want to wallow’.

Carrazzo’s calf problem can be sourced to the Round 5 match with Adelaide on a hard deck at the MCG “when I probably felt a bit more sore than I normally am”. He excused himself from the following Tuesday’s general training session, but when he resumed training some 48 hours prior to the Round 6 Melbourne match he experienced real discomfort high up in his right calf.

“I got a scan that day but the scan didn’t show very much,” Carrazzo said. “The calf was sore so I didn’t play that week, but when I tried to run the following week it was still sore.”

Such was the unusual location of the injury that a further three weeks lapsed before the problem was actually identified. Outside assistance was then sought and as Carrazzo readily admitted “I was advised by some that they’d never seen an injury like it”.

“That was probably a bit disappointing in that I’d cooked three weeks trying to work out what was going on,” Carrazzo said.

“But it was good to get to the bottom of it in the end.”

A creditable return for the Northern Blues against Casey at Casey Fields last weekend now means Carrazzo is again in the frame for senior selection, against Collingwood at the MCG on Friday night.

Curiously, he suspects the eight-week enforced lay-off may improve his cause with nine matches remaining until the serious stuff in September.

“Playing at the weekend, physically I felt better than I thought I was going to, so I was really happy with that,” Carrazzo said. “Coming into the second half of the season with the boys getting tired, I may have an advantage in some respects providing I can get my match fitness up to an acceptable level, because I haven’t been through the bash and crash of the past eight weeks.”

Clearly, time out with the crook calf has at least afforded Carrazzo the time to take stock... and that’s been healthy for the mind of the 2007 John Nicholls Medallist.

“When you’re playing every week you probably don’t got a lot of time for reflection – you just go out there and play, and you’re focusing on the next thing in front of you which is a good way to be,” he said.

“But I suppose when you have a bit of time out you get the chance to reflect on anything and for me it was all about how lucky I’ve been...”