Tarkyn_24
Okeydoke7 is [redacted]
- Dec 23, 2006
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Lockyer takes Farmer remember
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Leadership Group - WTF
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goalpie
Premiership Player
But Rhyce Shaw trains hard, plays with courage, has a good on field work ethic and is very level headed of the field. Those qualities all resemble a good leader.
I have to agree. I like Maxwell, however, I am slightly disapointed that he hasn't progressed as well as I expected. He seems to start the season off well, then gets lost half way through the season.
A couple of years ago I was certain that he would become a very good player, in the mould of a Clement...now I'm not to sure.
But he's still young, but he'd wanna pull his finger out and string together a couple of FULL good seasons.....
Which he is yet to do....so lets not get carried away with his 'greatness'. I'm actually surprised that he's been made a part of our leadership group.
To me, a leader does not have to be the best player, but a leader must inspire his team, lead by example. A leader should be the type of player who can stand tall when things are going wrong....play well when we are struggling, change the direction of a game by making an example of himself.
If Lockyer, Shaw and Maxwell are seen as our leaders....then we're in big trouble.
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Maxwell is highly overrated among pies supporters he is an average player that hasd a good work ethic. He is too skinny to play as a key back and don't utter crap about the Brown incident becuase (hats off for putting his body on the line but so he should) really maxwell slid in and brown fell on him which left maxwell with a broken leg and brown concussed cuase of a clash of heads. Before that game he was playingf ordinary and was being named as emergency and alot were questioning why he was getting a game.
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Tarkyn_24
Okeydoke7 is [redacted]
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Agreed
As I would understand it , the leadership group would not so much be 'captains of the club ' but rather people who's work ethics and influence would be deemed good examples for others to follow .
Therefore whilst not necessarily in the best 22 , however a valuable leader within the group .
Sometimes the best examples and the best lessons can be learned from people that are percieved to be in the lower ranks of the organisation rather than the champions .
Therefore whilst not necessarily in the best 22 , however a valuable leader within the group .
Sometimes the best examples and the best lessons can be learned from people that are percieved to be in the lower ranks of the organisation rather than the champions .
Good to see someone who actually has a pretty good perception of what a club may look for in leaders. Many on this board have the clouded view that the leadership group should be the best 7 players or atleast thereabouts. A strong group needs to have a cross section of leaders who all bring something to the different to the table. I suggest Tarkyn would be in their for his outstanding character and I suggest Rhyce may be in there for his excellent work ethic and attitude from a potential career threatening injury. Maxwell for his inspiration on the field(also seems to be a good talker and role model) while the others are a little more obvious.
I agree with eveything you are saying but Rhys Shaw should not be in there, yes when he played he showed good work ethic but he only played a couple of games, do you think he would of kept it up if he played all season. If he can play all this year and keep up his work ethic and keep in good form then he would most likely be in the 2008 leadership group but for now i think he should just focus on his football.
But that's the very reason he may be in the leadership group . The leadership group needs to lead , on and off the ground .
Whilst he was recuperating from knee surgery he may well have been the first one in , last to leave , sort of bloke . A bloke that worked his backside off with no real rewards to show for it (as in playing the game) yet continued to work harder than anyone else . A player that has fought back from playing adversity to get himself to where he is now a stronger player than he was 4 years ago . A player that has done all the hard yards , virtually on his own , after doing a knee and a player that has still bled black and white .
Sounds exactly what I would want in a leader .
Tarkyn_24
Okeydoke7 is [redacted]
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So are we now giving pity spots to anyone who has recovered from an ACL? One for you Tarks, one for you Rhyce... so Didak should be part of next year's leadership group Seriously though, I think what you wrote makes perfect sense and the same goes for Tarks.
Seriously though, I think what you wrote makes perfect sense and the same goes for Tarks.So are we now giving pity spots to anyone who has recovered from an ACL? One for you Tarks, one for you Rhyce... so Didak should be part of next year's leadership group
It looks like the bulldogs are going to have a big leadership group then, haha
How do you know if he has been working harder than anyone else?
Nick our whole team of ACL victims could take your whole team...
Theyve been an issue right throughout his career not just for 2007
Jabso
Brownlow Medallist
I disagree he is always barking out orders both on and off the field.
Tarkyn_24
Okeydoke7 is [redacted]
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Doubt it. Maybe all of our ACL victims...
So in other words... your whole squad minus johnson and west versus lockyer, shaw and didak... should be close
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Jabso
Brownlow Medallist
I think that adds another dimension to his game. He also works his guts out literally in training.
I'm not saying I would make him captain today but he is a pretty good role model, especially off the field.
I have nothing against the guy, i really like him as a footballer and a as a person. I'm just going by what i have seen in matches because i have never seen the guy train. I'm hoping to get to a couple of the trainings this week.
I'll give you my feedback then.
I'll give you my feedback then.
Tarks should be out Didak in.
Tarkyn_24
Okeydoke7 is [redacted]
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No. Tarks should be out, H. Shaw in, R. Shaw should be out, Thomas in. Again everyone is rash against Tarks, critizing him for everything. Sure, he's a bit slow, both in speed and decision making. But he still contributes week in week out.
Tarkyn_24
Okeydoke7 is [redacted]
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And for those of you who think Tarks and Maxwell do not show enough leadership, here is an article from Realfooty about Lockyer on the comeback in 2003.
SATURDAY, MAY 29, 2004
THE RETURN
Tarkyn Lockyer will sleep in for as long as he can this morning. Then he will get up, have some breakfast, take his dog for a walk, and try hard to relax. "I'll try and have a sleep in the afternoon and get up as though it's a normal game," he says. "I'll get up, have some cereal, and get ready like it's a day game. But it will be hard. I don't know how much sleep I'll get."
More than 13 months have passed since Lockyer last wore his No. 24 jumper. In that time, he has had his right knee reconstructed, broken his foot, and badly injured his ankle. His Collingwood team has played in, and lost, a grand final, and now sits on the bottom of the ladder.
Teammates have retired, or moved on, and he will return to the side a changed player: stronger, having lifted so many weights; smarter, having sat for so many matches in the coach's box, and with a new understanding of what he is capable of.
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"It not only makes me more determined, but I think it makes me a stronger person. It's good to know I can push myself through adversity and push myself through pain. Whatever pain I feel out on the ground, it's nothing. It's insignificant compared to what I've gone through in the last 12 months."
SATURDAY, APRIL 12, 2003
COLLINGWOOD V GEELONG, MCG
THE MOMENT
It happens about seven minutes in to round three. Lockyer is lunging for David Wojcinski when his feet flip from underneath him and his body is jerked in a circle. Before he hits the ground, his fingers have wrapped around his right knee and his eyes are scrunched shut. For the next five minutes, the pain is at its most severe. "I've got no idea what it's like to get shot," Lockyer says, "but I reckon that's what it would feel like. It doesn't last long, but it's the most unbelievable pain."
Within seconds, Lockyer is surrounded by trainers and stretchered into the rooms, club doctor Paul Blackman by his side. There, they are met by orthopedic surgeon Julian Feller, attending the game as a Collingwood supporter. Feller watched Lockyer fall and was immediately concerned. "I said to the other guys, 'I don't like the look of that'," he says. "It wasn't so much what he did. When the anterior cruciate tears, about 70 per cent of the time there's no contact involved. It was more the way he really did clutch at the knee."
Blackman is first to examine the knee. As soon as Feller feels it, he knows it is gone. The most popular diagnostic test on an injured ACL is the Lachman Test: the knee is bent to about 30 degrees and the shin is pulled forward. Normally, the ACL would stop that movement when the leg becomes straight, but when it is torn, the shin moves higher than the thigh easily.
Then there is the "end point" – or the lack of one. "If you imagine pulling on a bit of rope at both ends, there's a clunk and it goes tight," Feller says. "We talk about that being an 'end point', so when you're pulling the tibia forward and you don't feel it, you're in trouble. It feels spongy because there's nothing tightening up."
Blackman does not ponder how to best break the news. "They know," he says. "Even if they've never been injured before, they know." Lockyer's knee is packed in ice, and he leaves the medical rooms with his partner of four years, Benita. From her seat in the southern stand, she saw him fall and raced immediately to the rooms, with no clue what had happened.
"Everyone was saying 'thumb, ankle, head' and then someone said 'knee'," she says.
"I just ran. I didn't know what to say. You think you're prepared for everything and that you know each other, but there's nothing you can say in that situation to make it better."
Tucked inside a tracksuit, Lockyer sits on the bench after quarter-time and watches the rest of the match. His mind wanders, but only occasionally; for a while the game is close, giving him something to concentrate on. Back in the rooms, he is embraced by Paul Licuria and Jarrod Molloy, who have endured knee reconstructions of their own, and he realises he will not play football again all year.
"I went back to the doctor's room for some ice and when I walked out, the boys were singing the song," he says. "I couldn't stand it. I couldn't be there. You just think: '12 months.' That's forever."
MONDAY, APRIL 14, 2003
A BRAVE FACE
Lockyer sits downstairs with Feller, Blackman and David Buttifant, the Collingwood conditioning coach. The first thing they ask is: "Do you want your knee reconstructed?" "It sounds stupid," Blackman says, "but you ask. If you want to play professional sport again, you have to have it done. But not everyone does."
Next, he catches a lift to the second floor of the Collingwood Social Club to meet the media. He describes the pain, wonders why such a simple act can have such heavy consequences, and says his parents will visit next week, "to hold my hand and be nice to me".
In a couple of weeks he will be back in this room, to launch SELF 3, the fitness program for schoolkids he has devised and will run with 20 teammates. In the beginning, the business was to be a distraction from football. Now he has realised there really will be life without footy one day.
Lockyer smiles all the time, and someone asks how he can possibly look so cheerful. It is because he feels, for the first time since Saturday, that he is getting some control back. And besides: "There's no point hating life. You can only look at the future, and hopefully it's positive."
TUESDAY, APRIL 15, 2003
LA TROBE MEDICAL CENTRE, BUNDOORA
THE OPERATION
It is just past 1pm when Lockyer is wheeled in to surgery. He has only ever had a couple of minor operations on his fingers. He will look back on this moment as his most nervous of the entire comeback. For a moment, his heart races so fast that he worries the reconstruction will not go ahead and that he'll have to live with a wonky knee.
It does, and it takes about three-quartersof- an hour. Feller does from 900-1000 operations each year, and almost all of them involve knees. Each year, he will reconstruct about 300 ACLs. Before the start of last season, he put Essendon defender Dean Solomon's knee back together; more recently, he operated on Lockyer's untried teammate, Tom Davidson.
There are two ways to remake an ACL: with a piece of hamstring tendon, or a piece of tendon cut from the knee cap or patella. Feller does both, but prefers to use patella tendon on high-demand athletes. You can rehabilitate a patella graft quicker than a hamstring graft, because the patella graft has a piece of bone at the end, and the bone bonds with the tunnel that has been drilled through the knee faster than the hamstring tendon.
"We're basically restoring the knee to close to its original state," Feller says.
"It's never going to be quite the same, but it won't be far off."
Lockyer wakes up with his knee already packed in ice. Buttifant saw the surgery, and started his rehabilitation almost the second it was over.
The less swelling there is in the first six hours, the better. Lockyer feels hardly any pain, just a little stiff and sore, but his mind races through the night: what if it didn't work?
He goes home the next day, after a physiotherapist brings him a pair of crutches and shows him how to walk on them. He feels floppy, "like a baby", but as soon as he gets to his feet, he decides. Lockyer does not know how, and he doesn't tell anyone – but he will play again this year.
DAY 10
FRIDAY, APRIL 25, 2003
FIRST STEPS
The first thing Lockyer does when he discards his crutches is take his 13-week old puppy, Diesel, for a walk. "We went up the road and got the paper," he says. "It felt amazing. It felt normal."
Anything does, when you have spent seven days straight on a mattress in your lounge room. Lockyer wears no cast on his leg, just a bandage. The first part of his rehabilitation program is a simple series of quad exercises, and simply making sure the swelling stays down. He has decided to document his comeback in a journal, which no-one else can see.
Otherwise, Lockyer barely moves. His days are ruled by the Play Station, and he watches a Seinfeld marathon – 12 episodes in a day – on pay TV.
He gets angry on his third day at home, because his knee feels more sore, and bends less, than it did on day two. "You go out of your mind," he says. "I was pretty grouchy. The mood swings are unbelievable."
Lockyer watches Collingwood lose to Brisbane, and it is almost unbearable. He has not missed a match since the end of 2001, and has not had to watch on television for four years, so the edges of the screen infuriate him. Mark Alvey ruptures his knee playing for the Western Bulldogs against Essendon, and that makes him feel sick, too, although not in the way people think.
"Everyone says, 'you must know what he's going through', and in a way you do," he says.
"But I haven't been through it yet. I keep thinking, 'He's out for a whole year, that's shocking', and then I remember that I'm out for a year, too."
So far, though, he does not feel forgotten. Licuria saw him in hospital. His parents have arrived from Perth and been put to work in his garden. Nick Maxwell, a rookie, lives three streets away and drops in. "He rings all the time and he comes around. He made up a little video of our Wizard Cup highlights and some other stuff. I don't really even know him that well. But guys like that, you just think the world of them."
DAY 13
MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2003
A HEAVY LOAD
The physiotherapists have almost complete control over the first six weeks of Lockyer's rehab. Today he does his first upper-body weights. Already he has lost some strength, as well as four kilograms. "You really get an appreciation for people who have been laid up in bed for a long time," he says. "It's a real struggle to get up. You lose you your conditioning so quickly."
DAY 16
THURSDAY, MAY 1, 2003
RIDING HIGH
Another achievement: Lockyer rides the exercise bike for the first time. "It was only for five minutes, but it usually takes people about six weeks to ride the bike. I was over the moon. I felt like I was on the way back."
DAY 26
SUNDAY, MAY 11, 2003
WATER BOY
Two reasons to feel good: last night, Chris Tarrant kicked a goal after the siren, Collingwood beat Adelaide, and the team snapped a three-match losing streak. Lockyer has been spending match days in the coach's box, compiling midfield statistics and being careful not to say too much.
"When you're a player, you think you've got a fair idea of how it happens in the box, but you've really got no clue," he says. " The approach I've taken is, I just want to stay involved. I'll do whatever the coaches want me to do."
This morning, he splashed around the hotel pool. It was his first time back in water. "I did a little bit of running in the water and it was such a relief," he says. "Knowing you can move in that way, and being able to kick through the water – it just felt really good."
DAY 27
MONDAY, MAY 12, 2003
MILES AWAY
Today Lockyer does his first series of leg weights: simple things, like gentle one-legged squats. His right thigh looks considerably smaller than his left one – it is, by about 25 per cent – and he can't bear too much weight. He is seeing the physios at Olympic Park for an hour every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning.
In the gym, he is riding the bike for 20 minutes at a time. He has increased his leg weights, he jumps rope and he balances on what is best described as a 'wobble board'. He does it all early in the morning, about 7am. At times, he works with Davidson, and he has grown to know Buttifant more than he did before. But by the time his senior teammates get to work each day, Lockyer has usually headed home.
Lockyer suspects "Butters" knows he wants to play again this year. Benita knows, too, although neither has said anything about it. Right now, it feels a long way away, and the Magpies are not playing particularly well – they have won just half of their first 12 games.
DAY 57
TUESDAY, JUNE 10, 2003
FLYING
Lockyer runs for the first time, at 8am. He jogs in a straight line, gently, along the edge of the Victoria Park centre square. He jogs up and back, eight times, and then a little further, down to the fence. He looks as though he has never done anything so serious, but it's hard not to smile. Lockyer was up at 4am today, he was so excited.
Feller watches him run and Buttifant stands at the end of the square, Camcorder in hand. It is easy for an athlete overcoming a traumatic injury to adopt a dysfunctional running gait, and watching himself run is the best way for Lockyer to know whether he is doing it properly. He also uses a computer program, where footage can be played alongside each other, and technique compared. "Sometimes they're not even aware if they're running with a limp."
This morning, though, Lockyer looks good. "You're flying Tarkyn!" calls Buttifant. "You're absolutely flying."
DAY 65
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18, 2003
OUTSIDE LOOKING IN
Lockyer joins Collingwood's rehabilitation group for the first time in Darwin, where the club spends its mid-season break. But he has never felt so low. Perhaps it is because he is not used to training with other players; it is more of a so-close-but-so-far sort of thing. "I was running along the side of the oval while the boys were training," he says. "It was the first time I'd trained so close to them. I think that's what got to me."
He goes back to his room, gets on the phone to his mum, and worries that his roommate, Shane Woewodin, thinks he's crazy. "I was a mess. It's the worst I've been so far; I was pathetic. I felt like I was working really hard but kept getting reminded that I wasn't a part of things."
Jill Lockyer tells Tarkyn the same thing she says every time he rings up in one of these moods: that it is just one more test. More than ever in the past few months, she has become able to read her son simply by the sound of his voice. "You can pick it; it's there in the first 'Hi'," she says. "All you can do is say, 'Keep going, be positive'. That's all you can possibly do."
Returning to Melbourne, things turn quickly for Collingwood. The team wins eight of its last nine matches to finish in second spot on the ladder for the start of the finals, and life improves for Lockyer, too. Almost as soon as he gets home, he increases all aspects of his training load. "I was doing some agility running; I was running around cones like a madman," he says.
"I started kicking and running around the oval and doing some contested marking. Everything they asked me to do, I passed with flying colours."
There is a checklist Feller runs through before providing the allclear to start full training. No swelling, full range of movement and muscle function, stability, quadriceps strength. Lockyer has been running for seven weeks. "It's funny, because people progress at different rates," Feller says. "Partly it's determined by their confidence, their personality, and what other people are telling them. If someone's told you from the start that it's going to take you 12 months to play again, then it probably will. Expectations play a big part."
Suddenly, Lockyer is contemplating a round 21 return, just 18 weeks after he injured himself. He wants to train for a month, and see what happens. "I don't know whether there's enough time," he says. "I don't even know if they would put me back in the team. But that's the plan."
DAY 104
MONDAY, JULY 28, 2003
THE SETBACK (No.1)
There is a problem. For the past few weeks, Lockyer's right foot has been feeling a little bit sore. At first, he didn't want to say anything, because it felt fine once it warmed up. "I thought it was just a sore joint or something, so I kept going and hoped it would be OK," he says. "It got to the point where I just couldn't run. I'd do a bit of agility running, and that would be it. It would just kill."
Today, X-rays have confirmed he has a stress fracture in his fifth metatarsal – the bone behind his right toe; tomorrow, he will have more surgery. This time, Feller puts a screw down the bone, to help it heal and keep it from happening again.
"Whether it speeds up the recovery is hard to know. In some situations it probably does, but it's really to make sure everything heals in a routine way," Feller says.
This sort of stress fracture is, traditionally, one of the slowest to heal. Now, Lockyer knows his year is over for good. His spot on the list has been temporarily taken by Maxwell, although the rookie will not break through for a game. He is annoyed at being back on crutches, and more deeply devastated at the thought that working so hard has cost him. It's frustrating that his knee feels perfectly fine, but that people won't know that. Instead, they will keep asking the same question he has heard 10 times every day since April: when are you gonna play again?
At the same time, he is not sorry he pushed himself so far. He has stopped writing his journal, because the knee is better now. "I'm proud that I got so close, but it's the most frustrating thing, too. I did the best I could and it didn't get me there."
DAY 165
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2003
GRAND FINAL DAY
Lockyer feels like he does everything but play against the Brisbane Lions. He wakes up at 5am, and walks Diesel up the road. "I got in my suit and I felt like packing my bag," he says. "I pretty much went through my entire pre-match routine."
The finals have felt horrible – each week, Lockyer has looked at the opposition team and imagined who he would line up against. He cried when the team beat the Lions in week one, and let the players drag him into their circle, even though he didn't think he should be there. He dreams about playing and thinks about it once every two hours, maybe more. Ironically, Lockyer's foot has taken longer to get better than his knee did.
The mood in the box is noticeably different than it has been all year. It's quieter. It's tense; weird. Ten minutes into the second quarter, Lockyer can tell it's going to be a very bad day. "From the start, we just struggled to score."
Strangely, he feels a bigger part of the 50-point loss than the wins that led to it. After the grand final, Lockyer goes to London for Collingwood's exhibition match against Fremantle at The Oval.
From there, he travels to Dublin and Barcelona with some teammates; back home, he spends two weeks in Perth and Albany with Benita, and visits grandparents he has not seen in three years.
Already, he wants preseason training to start. The past year has changed him, but he is not exactly sure how, and wants to play again, so he can find out. "I know if you can overcome an injury like this, there's not much that's going to hold you back," he says.
DAY 246
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2003
FORGETTING
There are the days when Lockyer forgets he has a reconstructed knee. Then there are the days he must make himself remember. On a two-day trip to Phillip Island with Mick Malthouse, Buttifant and the Magpies' seven-player leadership team, he is clambering aboard a surfboard when he thinks: 'I shouldn't be doing this.'
"At one point I stood up a bit awkwardly and I thought, 'What are you doing?'" he says.
"It was funny, because all last year Benita was in my ear, saying, 'Don't do this, you shouldn't do that', and I'd just say, 'She'll be right'. The only thing you want is to be normal, like everyone else again. But when you think about it, you can never be exactly the same."
DAY 290
FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 2004
THE SETBACK (No.2)
Lockyer was kept from the early pre-season running sessions, but two weeks before Christmas could do everything – "the tackling, the body pressure work, jumping into the marking bag". His legs have only just evened up in size, and he has added about six kilograms to his 75kg playing weight, much of it across his shoulders.
Then Tarrant tackles him awkwardly. Lockyer feels at first like he might have broken his leg; as it happens, he badly sprains the ligament just above his left ankle, and is thrust into a new rehab program.
What's worse is how everyone looks at him after it happens. It makes him realise that it's not until he gets back into the team, and plays, that he will be a proper part of this group again. "Training went on but it was deathly quiet and no-one was saying a word, just watching. People can't help that, but I hate it. I'm sick of people looking at you and worrying, every time you do something."
DAY 328
MONDAY, MARCH 8, 2004
THE SETBACK (No.3)
The Collingwood players are on their way back from Alice Springs, and a practice match against Port Adelaide, when Lockyer plays his first football in almost a year. He wears the No.1 jumper for Williamstown, in a game against Werribee at Victoria Park, and his first half is encouraging. Lockyer picks up six kicks, lays a few tackles, and feels that he is starting to involve himself. What happens next is disastrous.
Early in the third quarter, Lockyer is chasing down a ball at half-forward when he feels his right foot snap, and drags himself, furious, to the bench. Tomorrow, scans will confirm a new break, in the same place as the first; with Feller overseas, Lockyer is operated on by Mark Blackney, who inserts a new, bigger screw. There is no single reason why the foot broke. It might have been his running gait, foot mechanics, the accelerated nature of his ACL rehab, or his body simply rejecting the screw. "Mostly, he was unlucky," says Buttifant.
Still, this time the rehab is a little different, and considerably more cautious. Lockyer is put in plaster for three weeks and the club buys a bone stimulation machine for him. It's a small box – about the size of a videotape – that he puts on his foot for 15 minutes each day. "It uses pulse ultrasound to stimulate the bone itself," Blackman says. "It speeds up the actual healing of the fracture, and just makes it a bit stronger."
DAY 407
TUESDAY, MAY 25, 2004
SO CLOSE
Lockyer has played three more games for Williamstown now: 60 minutes against Port Melbourne (and a first kick that drifted out on the full) and 80 against the Northern Bullants. Against Geelong on Sunday, he played all but the last 10 minutes, and had 34 possessions.
"He was filthy," says Seagulls coach Brad Gotch. "He reckoned he could have stayed out there. I was just mindful that it was his third match back. But he looked good out there. You see how good his kicking is and think, 'How have we gone without that for so long?'"
Today, Lockyer's name was discussed at a match committee meeting more seriously. Gotch thinks he is a 50-50 chance to play against the Kangaroos. But much depends on Scott Burns and Josh Fraser, who will have their hamstring injuries tested at training.
Collingwood won its first match in seven weeks last week, too, with a young side, and Gotch is not sure Malthouse wants to risk spirit by dropping too many youngsters. One of those players was Maxwell, promoted from the rookie list for a second time last week. This time he came up for Davidson, who wrecked his "good" knee on debut in round two, and is now back on 7am starts.
Lockyer knows he does not control his comeback now.
"Everyone keeps asking. It's the same question, 'When are you going to play?' But it's not up to me any more. It might be this week, it might be in three weeks. I don't know, but all I can say is that I am back. The rest is up to the coaches now."
DAY 409
THURSDAY, MAY 27, 2004
BACK
It's official. Collingwood names three 'ins' for the game against the Kangaroos – Fraser, Burns, and Lockyer. He will play his first game back on the final day of his parents' annual three-week visit and start on the interchange bench alongside Maxwell and Buttifant, who will take more pleasure from his return than a black-and-white win.
"Winning is fantastic, but this is what you work for," Buttifant says. "It's a proud moment. It's a proud moment for Tarkyn and it's a proud moment for everyone who has been through this with him."
Maxwell (rookie listed) has shown true leadership qualitities by supporting his teammates. Lockyer too, showed that despite the injury, he still has a positive outlook on the club and his life. That is why those two are part of the 2007 leadership squad, no matter whether you agree or not. You can argue that any one of those players do not deserve their spot.
SATURDAY, MAY 29, 2004
THE RETURN
Tarkyn Lockyer will sleep in for as long as he can this morning. Then he will get up, have some breakfast, take his dog for a walk, and try hard to relax. "I'll try and have a sleep in the afternoon and get up as though it's a normal game," he says. "I'll get up, have some cereal, and get ready like it's a day game. But it will be hard. I don't know how much sleep I'll get."
More than 13 months have passed since Lockyer last wore his No. 24 jumper. In that time, he has had his right knee reconstructed, broken his foot, and badly injured his ankle. His Collingwood team has played in, and lost, a grand final, and now sits on the bottom of the ladder.
Teammates have retired, or moved on, and he will return to the side a changed player: stronger, having lifted so many weights; smarter, having sat for so many matches in the coach's box, and with a new understanding of what he is capable of.
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"It not only makes me more determined, but I think it makes me a stronger person. It's good to know I can push myself through adversity and push myself through pain. Whatever pain I feel out on the ground, it's nothing. It's insignificant compared to what I've gone through in the last 12 months."
SATURDAY, APRIL 12, 2003
COLLINGWOOD V GEELONG, MCG
THE MOMENT
It happens about seven minutes in to round three. Lockyer is lunging for David Wojcinski when his feet flip from underneath him and his body is jerked in a circle. Before he hits the ground, his fingers have wrapped around his right knee and his eyes are scrunched shut. For the next five minutes, the pain is at its most severe. "I've got no idea what it's like to get shot," Lockyer says, "but I reckon that's what it would feel like. It doesn't last long, but it's the most unbelievable pain."
Within seconds, Lockyer is surrounded by trainers and stretchered into the rooms, club doctor Paul Blackman by his side. There, they are met by orthopedic surgeon Julian Feller, attending the game as a Collingwood supporter. Feller watched Lockyer fall and was immediately concerned. "I said to the other guys, 'I don't like the look of that'," he says. "It wasn't so much what he did. When the anterior cruciate tears, about 70 per cent of the time there's no contact involved. It was more the way he really did clutch at the knee."
Blackman is first to examine the knee. As soon as Feller feels it, he knows it is gone. The most popular diagnostic test on an injured ACL is the Lachman Test: the knee is bent to about 30 degrees and the shin is pulled forward. Normally, the ACL would stop that movement when the leg becomes straight, but when it is torn, the shin moves higher than the thigh easily.
Then there is the "end point" – or the lack of one. "If you imagine pulling on a bit of rope at both ends, there's a clunk and it goes tight," Feller says. "We talk about that being an 'end point', so when you're pulling the tibia forward and you don't feel it, you're in trouble. It feels spongy because there's nothing tightening up."
Blackman does not ponder how to best break the news. "They know," he says. "Even if they've never been injured before, they know." Lockyer's knee is packed in ice, and he leaves the medical rooms with his partner of four years, Benita. From her seat in the southern stand, she saw him fall and raced immediately to the rooms, with no clue what had happened.
"Everyone was saying 'thumb, ankle, head' and then someone said 'knee'," she says.
"I just ran. I didn't know what to say. You think you're prepared for everything and that you know each other, but there's nothing you can say in that situation to make it better."
Tucked inside a tracksuit, Lockyer sits on the bench after quarter-time and watches the rest of the match. His mind wanders, but only occasionally; for a while the game is close, giving him something to concentrate on. Back in the rooms, he is embraced by Paul Licuria and Jarrod Molloy, who have endured knee reconstructions of their own, and he realises he will not play football again all year.
"I went back to the doctor's room for some ice and when I walked out, the boys were singing the song," he says. "I couldn't stand it. I couldn't be there. You just think: '12 months.' That's forever."
MONDAY, APRIL 14, 2003
A BRAVE FACE
Lockyer sits downstairs with Feller, Blackman and David Buttifant, the Collingwood conditioning coach. The first thing they ask is: "Do you want your knee reconstructed?" "It sounds stupid," Blackman says, "but you ask. If you want to play professional sport again, you have to have it done. But not everyone does."
Next, he catches a lift to the second floor of the Collingwood Social Club to meet the media. He describes the pain, wonders why such a simple act can have such heavy consequences, and says his parents will visit next week, "to hold my hand and be nice to me".
In a couple of weeks he will be back in this room, to launch SELF 3, the fitness program for schoolkids he has devised and will run with 20 teammates. In the beginning, the business was to be a distraction from football. Now he has realised there really will be life without footy one day.
Lockyer smiles all the time, and someone asks how he can possibly look so cheerful. It is because he feels, for the first time since Saturday, that he is getting some control back. And besides: "There's no point hating life. You can only look at the future, and hopefully it's positive."
TUESDAY, APRIL 15, 2003
LA TROBE MEDICAL CENTRE, BUNDOORA
THE OPERATION
It is just past 1pm when Lockyer is wheeled in to surgery. He has only ever had a couple of minor operations on his fingers. He will look back on this moment as his most nervous of the entire comeback. For a moment, his heart races so fast that he worries the reconstruction will not go ahead and that he'll have to live with a wonky knee.
It does, and it takes about three-quartersof- an hour. Feller does from 900-1000 operations each year, and almost all of them involve knees. Each year, he will reconstruct about 300 ACLs. Before the start of last season, he put Essendon defender Dean Solomon's knee back together; more recently, he operated on Lockyer's untried teammate, Tom Davidson.
There are two ways to remake an ACL: with a piece of hamstring tendon, or a piece of tendon cut from the knee cap or patella. Feller does both, but prefers to use patella tendon on high-demand athletes. You can rehabilitate a patella graft quicker than a hamstring graft, because the patella graft has a piece of bone at the end, and the bone bonds with the tunnel that has been drilled through the knee faster than the hamstring tendon.
"We're basically restoring the knee to close to its original state," Feller says.
"It's never going to be quite the same, but it won't be far off."
Lockyer wakes up with his knee already packed in ice. Buttifant saw the surgery, and started his rehabilitation almost the second it was over.
The less swelling there is in the first six hours, the better. Lockyer feels hardly any pain, just a little stiff and sore, but his mind races through the night: what if it didn't work?
He goes home the next day, after a physiotherapist brings him a pair of crutches and shows him how to walk on them. He feels floppy, "like a baby", but as soon as he gets to his feet, he decides. Lockyer does not know how, and he doesn't tell anyone – but he will play again this year.
DAY 10
FRIDAY, APRIL 25, 2003
FIRST STEPS
The first thing Lockyer does when he discards his crutches is take his 13-week old puppy, Diesel, for a walk. "We went up the road and got the paper," he says. "It felt amazing. It felt normal."
Anything does, when you have spent seven days straight on a mattress in your lounge room. Lockyer wears no cast on his leg, just a bandage. The first part of his rehabilitation program is a simple series of quad exercises, and simply making sure the swelling stays down. He has decided to document his comeback in a journal, which no-one else can see.
Otherwise, Lockyer barely moves. His days are ruled by the Play Station, and he watches a Seinfeld marathon – 12 episodes in a day – on pay TV.
He gets angry on his third day at home, because his knee feels more sore, and bends less, than it did on day two. "You go out of your mind," he says. "I was pretty grouchy. The mood swings are unbelievable."
Lockyer watches Collingwood lose to Brisbane, and it is almost unbearable. He has not missed a match since the end of 2001, and has not had to watch on television for four years, so the edges of the screen infuriate him. Mark Alvey ruptures his knee playing for the Western Bulldogs against Essendon, and that makes him feel sick, too, although not in the way people think.
"Everyone says, 'you must know what he's going through', and in a way you do," he says.
"But I haven't been through it yet. I keep thinking, 'He's out for a whole year, that's shocking', and then I remember that I'm out for a year, too."
So far, though, he does not feel forgotten. Licuria saw him in hospital. His parents have arrived from Perth and been put to work in his garden. Nick Maxwell, a rookie, lives three streets away and drops in. "He rings all the time and he comes around. He made up a little video of our Wizard Cup highlights and some other stuff. I don't really even know him that well. But guys like that, you just think the world of them."
DAY 13
MONDAY, APRIL 28, 2003
A HEAVY LOAD
The physiotherapists have almost complete control over the first six weeks of Lockyer's rehab. Today he does his first upper-body weights. Already he has lost some strength, as well as four kilograms. "You really get an appreciation for people who have been laid up in bed for a long time," he says. "It's a real struggle to get up. You lose you your conditioning so quickly."
DAY 16
THURSDAY, MAY 1, 2003
RIDING HIGH
Another achievement: Lockyer rides the exercise bike for the first time. "It was only for five minutes, but it usually takes people about six weeks to ride the bike. I was over the moon. I felt like I was on the way back."
DAY 26
SUNDAY, MAY 11, 2003
WATER BOY
Two reasons to feel good: last night, Chris Tarrant kicked a goal after the siren, Collingwood beat Adelaide, and the team snapped a three-match losing streak. Lockyer has been spending match days in the coach's box, compiling midfield statistics and being careful not to say too much.
"When you're a player, you think you've got a fair idea of how it happens in the box, but you've really got no clue," he says. " The approach I've taken is, I just want to stay involved. I'll do whatever the coaches want me to do."
This morning, he splashed around the hotel pool. It was his first time back in water. "I did a little bit of running in the water and it was such a relief," he says. "Knowing you can move in that way, and being able to kick through the water – it just felt really good."
DAY 27
MONDAY, MAY 12, 2003
MILES AWAY
Today Lockyer does his first series of leg weights: simple things, like gentle one-legged squats. His right thigh looks considerably smaller than his left one – it is, by about 25 per cent – and he can't bear too much weight. He is seeing the physios at Olympic Park for an hour every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning.
In the gym, he is riding the bike for 20 minutes at a time. He has increased his leg weights, he jumps rope and he balances on what is best described as a 'wobble board'. He does it all early in the morning, about 7am. At times, he works with Davidson, and he has grown to know Buttifant more than he did before. But by the time his senior teammates get to work each day, Lockyer has usually headed home.
Lockyer suspects "Butters" knows he wants to play again this year. Benita knows, too, although neither has said anything about it. Right now, it feels a long way away, and the Magpies are not playing particularly well – they have won just half of their first 12 games.
DAY 57
TUESDAY, JUNE 10, 2003
FLYING
Lockyer runs for the first time, at 8am. He jogs in a straight line, gently, along the edge of the Victoria Park centre square. He jogs up and back, eight times, and then a little further, down to the fence. He looks as though he has never done anything so serious, but it's hard not to smile. Lockyer was up at 4am today, he was so excited.
Feller watches him run and Buttifant stands at the end of the square, Camcorder in hand. It is easy for an athlete overcoming a traumatic injury to adopt a dysfunctional running gait, and watching himself run is the best way for Lockyer to know whether he is doing it properly. He also uses a computer program, where footage can be played alongside each other, and technique compared. "Sometimes they're not even aware if they're running with a limp."
This morning, though, Lockyer looks good. "You're flying Tarkyn!" calls Buttifant. "You're absolutely flying."
DAY 65
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18, 2003
OUTSIDE LOOKING IN
Lockyer joins Collingwood's rehabilitation group for the first time in Darwin, where the club spends its mid-season break. But he has never felt so low. Perhaps it is because he is not used to training with other players; it is more of a so-close-but-so-far sort of thing. "I was running along the side of the oval while the boys were training," he says. "It was the first time I'd trained so close to them. I think that's what got to me."
He goes back to his room, gets on the phone to his mum, and worries that his roommate, Shane Woewodin, thinks he's crazy. "I was a mess. It's the worst I've been so far; I was pathetic. I felt like I was working really hard but kept getting reminded that I wasn't a part of things."
Jill Lockyer tells Tarkyn the same thing she says every time he rings up in one of these moods: that it is just one more test. More than ever in the past few months, she has become able to read her son simply by the sound of his voice. "You can pick it; it's there in the first 'Hi'," she says. "All you can do is say, 'Keep going, be positive'. That's all you can possibly do."
Returning to Melbourne, things turn quickly for Collingwood. The team wins eight of its last nine matches to finish in second spot on the ladder for the start of the finals, and life improves for Lockyer, too. Almost as soon as he gets home, he increases all aspects of his training load. "I was doing some agility running; I was running around cones like a madman," he says.
"I started kicking and running around the oval and doing some contested marking. Everything they asked me to do, I passed with flying colours."
There is a checklist Feller runs through before providing the allclear to start full training. No swelling, full range of movement and muscle function, stability, quadriceps strength. Lockyer has been running for seven weeks. "It's funny, because people progress at different rates," Feller says. "Partly it's determined by their confidence, their personality, and what other people are telling them. If someone's told you from the start that it's going to take you 12 months to play again, then it probably will. Expectations play a big part."
Suddenly, Lockyer is contemplating a round 21 return, just 18 weeks after he injured himself. He wants to train for a month, and see what happens. "I don't know whether there's enough time," he says. "I don't even know if they would put me back in the team. But that's the plan."
DAY 104
MONDAY, JULY 28, 2003
THE SETBACK (No.1)
There is a problem. For the past few weeks, Lockyer's right foot has been feeling a little bit sore. At first, he didn't want to say anything, because it felt fine once it warmed up. "I thought it was just a sore joint or something, so I kept going and hoped it would be OK," he says. "It got to the point where I just couldn't run. I'd do a bit of agility running, and that would be it. It would just kill."
Today, X-rays have confirmed he has a stress fracture in his fifth metatarsal – the bone behind his right toe; tomorrow, he will have more surgery. This time, Feller puts a screw down the bone, to help it heal and keep it from happening again.
"Whether it speeds up the recovery is hard to know. In some situations it probably does, but it's really to make sure everything heals in a routine way," Feller says.
This sort of stress fracture is, traditionally, one of the slowest to heal. Now, Lockyer knows his year is over for good. His spot on the list has been temporarily taken by Maxwell, although the rookie will not break through for a game. He is annoyed at being back on crutches, and more deeply devastated at the thought that working so hard has cost him. It's frustrating that his knee feels perfectly fine, but that people won't know that. Instead, they will keep asking the same question he has heard 10 times every day since April: when are you gonna play again?
At the same time, he is not sorry he pushed himself so far. He has stopped writing his journal, because the knee is better now. "I'm proud that I got so close, but it's the most frustrating thing, too. I did the best I could and it didn't get me there."
DAY 165
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2003
GRAND FINAL DAY
Lockyer feels like he does everything but play against the Brisbane Lions. He wakes up at 5am, and walks Diesel up the road. "I got in my suit and I felt like packing my bag," he says. "I pretty much went through my entire pre-match routine."
The finals have felt horrible – each week, Lockyer has looked at the opposition team and imagined who he would line up against. He cried when the team beat the Lions in week one, and let the players drag him into their circle, even though he didn't think he should be there. He dreams about playing and thinks about it once every two hours, maybe more. Ironically, Lockyer's foot has taken longer to get better than his knee did.
The mood in the box is noticeably different than it has been all year. It's quieter. It's tense; weird. Ten minutes into the second quarter, Lockyer can tell it's going to be a very bad day. "From the start, we just struggled to score."
Strangely, he feels a bigger part of the 50-point loss than the wins that led to it. After the grand final, Lockyer goes to London for Collingwood's exhibition match against Fremantle at The Oval.
From there, he travels to Dublin and Barcelona with some teammates; back home, he spends two weeks in Perth and Albany with Benita, and visits grandparents he has not seen in three years.
Already, he wants preseason training to start. The past year has changed him, but he is not exactly sure how, and wants to play again, so he can find out. "I know if you can overcome an injury like this, there's not much that's going to hold you back," he says.
DAY 246
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2003
FORGETTING
There are the days when Lockyer forgets he has a reconstructed knee. Then there are the days he must make himself remember. On a two-day trip to Phillip Island with Mick Malthouse, Buttifant and the Magpies' seven-player leadership team, he is clambering aboard a surfboard when he thinks: 'I shouldn't be doing this.'
"At one point I stood up a bit awkwardly and I thought, 'What are you doing?'" he says.
"It was funny, because all last year Benita was in my ear, saying, 'Don't do this, you shouldn't do that', and I'd just say, 'She'll be right'. The only thing you want is to be normal, like everyone else again. But when you think about it, you can never be exactly the same."
DAY 290
FRIDAY, JANUARY 30, 2004
THE SETBACK (No.2)
Lockyer was kept from the early pre-season running sessions, but two weeks before Christmas could do everything – "the tackling, the body pressure work, jumping into the marking bag". His legs have only just evened up in size, and he has added about six kilograms to his 75kg playing weight, much of it across his shoulders.
Then Tarrant tackles him awkwardly. Lockyer feels at first like he might have broken his leg; as it happens, he badly sprains the ligament just above his left ankle, and is thrust into a new rehab program.
What's worse is how everyone looks at him after it happens. It makes him realise that it's not until he gets back into the team, and plays, that he will be a proper part of this group again. "Training went on but it was deathly quiet and no-one was saying a word, just watching. People can't help that, but I hate it. I'm sick of people looking at you and worrying, every time you do something."
DAY 328
MONDAY, MARCH 8, 2004
THE SETBACK (No.3)
The Collingwood players are on their way back from Alice Springs, and a practice match against Port Adelaide, when Lockyer plays his first football in almost a year. He wears the No.1 jumper for Williamstown, in a game against Werribee at Victoria Park, and his first half is encouraging. Lockyer picks up six kicks, lays a few tackles, and feels that he is starting to involve himself. What happens next is disastrous.
Early in the third quarter, Lockyer is chasing down a ball at half-forward when he feels his right foot snap, and drags himself, furious, to the bench. Tomorrow, scans will confirm a new break, in the same place as the first; with Feller overseas, Lockyer is operated on by Mark Blackney, who inserts a new, bigger screw. There is no single reason why the foot broke. It might have been his running gait, foot mechanics, the accelerated nature of his ACL rehab, or his body simply rejecting the screw. "Mostly, he was unlucky," says Buttifant.
Still, this time the rehab is a little different, and considerably more cautious. Lockyer is put in plaster for three weeks and the club buys a bone stimulation machine for him. It's a small box – about the size of a videotape – that he puts on his foot for 15 minutes each day. "It uses pulse ultrasound to stimulate the bone itself," Blackman says. "It speeds up the actual healing of the fracture, and just makes it a bit stronger."
DAY 407
TUESDAY, MAY 25, 2004
SO CLOSE
Lockyer has played three more games for Williamstown now: 60 minutes against Port Melbourne (and a first kick that drifted out on the full) and 80 against the Northern Bullants. Against Geelong on Sunday, he played all but the last 10 minutes, and had 34 possessions.
"He was filthy," says Seagulls coach Brad Gotch. "He reckoned he could have stayed out there. I was just mindful that it was his third match back. But he looked good out there. You see how good his kicking is and think, 'How have we gone without that for so long?'"
Today, Lockyer's name was discussed at a match committee meeting more seriously. Gotch thinks he is a 50-50 chance to play against the Kangaroos. But much depends on Scott Burns and Josh Fraser, who will have their hamstring injuries tested at training.
Collingwood won its first match in seven weeks last week, too, with a young side, and Gotch is not sure Malthouse wants to risk spirit by dropping too many youngsters. One of those players was Maxwell, promoted from the rookie list for a second time last week. This time he came up for Davidson, who wrecked his "good" knee on debut in round two, and is now back on 7am starts.
Lockyer knows he does not control his comeback now.
"Everyone keeps asking. It's the same question, 'When are you going to play?' But it's not up to me any more. It might be this week, it might be in three weeks. I don't know, but all I can say is that I am back. The rest is up to the coaches now."
DAY 409
THURSDAY, MAY 27, 2004
BACK
It's official. Collingwood names three 'ins' for the game against the Kangaroos – Fraser, Burns, and Lockyer. He will play his first game back on the final day of his parents' annual three-week visit and start on the interchange bench alongside Maxwell and Buttifant, who will take more pleasure from his return than a black-and-white win.
"Winning is fantastic, but this is what you work for," Buttifant says. "It's a proud moment. It's a proud moment for Tarkyn and it's a proud moment for everyone who has been through this with him."
Maxwell (rookie listed) has shown true leadership qualitities by supporting his teammates. Lockyer too, showed that despite the injury, he still has a positive outlook on the club and his life. That is why those two are part of the 2007 leadership squad, no matter whether you agree or not. You can argue that any one of those players do not deserve their spot.
Ramere
Senior List
Thus far it looks like Tarks (particularly) & Rhyce have thrived on being elevated into the leadership group, lets hope it remains that way. Now we just need Josh & Johno to lift & for Bucks to get back on the park......