Melbourne City coach Dario Vidosic has called for the spate of season-ending anterior cruciate ligament injuries in A-League Women to be investigated.
City star and league golden boot leader Holly McNamara suffered her third ACL rupture on Sunday, a day after being recalled to the Matildas.
She became the fifth victim of the dreaded injury in just five weeks following similar setbacks to Sydney FC captain Natalie Tobin, Brisbane pair Chelsea Blissett and Grace Kuilamu, and Wellington young gun Grace Wisnewski.
"We need to as a collective, as a league and the experts and people that understand it probably better than myself, everyone needs to now really examine it," Vidosic said on Friday.
"Is it whether the pre-seasons are too short, that they're not able to get into a correct physical standpoint for the season?
"Which is tough - you have to have long-distance travels and you're playing in hotter conditions. So is that maybe a factor? It's hard to probably pinpoint but it's something that needs to be addressed.
"We can't be losing this many players and they're all young, they all love football, they all want to be on the pitch and we can't afford to have this many girls going down with long-term injuries.
"It doesn't help them, it doesn't help anyone."
A "heartbroken" City will now have to take on the season without McNamara, who had surgery on Thursday and has started her recovery process.
"She helped us when when we needed her and now she needs us to help her," Vidosic said.
"So we'll be there every step of the way and I'm sure everyone's really excited already to see her back out there."
City will also be without fellow injured attackers Bryleeh Henry and Caitlin Karic, prompting a potential reshuffle against Sydney FC on Sunday.
"We have to move on," Vidosic said.
"We have to prepare and the season rolls on and we're just hopeful that that's the end of it, that from any of the teams anywhere that there's no more any of these long-term injuries.
"Then just from our standpoint we tried a couple things, we're looking at what's best. So we'll try something against Sydney this weekend."
On Saturday, Western United will host Western Sydney while Wellington welcome leaders Perth Glory.
There are four games on Sunday.
Melbourne Victory host Central Coast, Canberra welcome Newcastle while Adelaide United travel to face Brisbane Roar.
