Souths prop Sam Burgess went to extreme measures to keep himself on the park last season. Picture: Gregg Porteous Source: The Daily Telegraph
WHEN big Sammy Burgess strides out for Souths in the season opener against the Roosters on Thursday night, you could forgive him for hoping the next 30 weeks will not represent a living hell for his body.
Last year, he missed just six games - smashing the myth that he is injury prone - but the untold story of how he kept his brittle body together is fascinating.
From the taboo practice of injecting himself with his own blood, to playing with a compound fracture of the middle finger, to radical stem cell injections via liposuction - he is effectively the Bunnies' version of Frankenstein's monster.
"I played 22 games last year - and I haven't a clue how I did it," the Englishman said.
"When you are injured, it is the most demoralising thing. You are worthless to your team. You can't train. You are being paid to sit there and do stuff-all basically. That's the most frustrating thing about it, and it hits me hard. It's the only thing I struggle with. Footy is not all I've got - but it's what I live to do."
Live to do while living through agony.
The trouble started in round five last year, when he suffered a grade-three medial ligament tear in his left knee against the Wests Tigers after prop Aaron Woods fell on top of him as third man into a tackle.
That would normally sideline him for as much as two months. Instead, he had plasma injections - a procedure that sees blood drawn from the player, spun at high speed to separate the plasma, which is then injected into the damaged joint - and missed four games.
"It's frowned upon, but it's not illegal so do it," Burgess explains. "It's only my own blood going back in. I bought this game-ready ice machine and managed to get myself back four weeks earlier than I first thought."
In his first session back, Burgess's right knee collided with the kneecap of a young player at training.
"He was trying to be a hero, which is fair enough," Burgess says. "That's what I was like as a kid. It just smashed it and all the cartilage tore off the back of my kneecap. I played on for four weeks with that, needled up every week, and at half-time. It was a vicious circle: I wouldn't train all week, and just play on the weekend, for four weeks."
Somehow, Burgess managed to drag his body through to the round 13 match against the Bulldogs.
The next day, after a narrow loss as Souths went into the bye, he was rushed into surgery for an arthroscopy and missed two matches before returning against Penrith.
Then, 15 minutes into proceedings, Frankenstein's bunny was busted open again.
"I looked down and my finger was backwards. A compound fracture. I had a bone hanging out here." He shows you the scar on the finger.
"I pulled it in and thought 'What's going on here?' I couldn't feel it, but there was blood pissing out everywhere. The trainer looked at it, you could see straight through it. The skin pulled straight down.
"We wrapped it up, 10 minutes before half-time. The blood was pissing through and the doctor said, 'You can't play on'. He wanted to stitch it there and then and I said not to stitch it."
Burgess finished the match, and then the next day was in for surgery to have dirt and grit removed but not the tendon reattached.
"If you do that, you're out for six weeks," Burgess says. "I wasn't going to be back for one game and then be out for six weeks with a finger injury."
Burgess played out the rest of the season, showing the type of form most associate with one of the best skilful big men in the game. In the off-season, he missed England's Test series against Wales and France to clean up the cartilage damage in his knees.
It was another revolutionary procedure, pushing the boundaries of sports science, where fat was sucked from his stomach and stem cells are then injected back into the cartilage.
"Free liposuction," Burgess says.
There are two morals to this story. The first is that Burgess has learnt the importance of ensuring he does not put his body in dangerous positions on the field - something coach Michael Maguire has stressed.
"When I hurt myself against the Tigers, I put myself in a stupid position," he says.
"I was thinking it was a freak injury, but it wasn't because I put myself in a stupid position: third man in and thrown myself at the Tigers player.
"I get a rush of blood sometimes. I'm just learning how to control and be effective, and that is through Madge. It doesn't mean being soft - it means playing smart.
"Before, I thought you just rip in. You can't. You can't get through 26 rounds like that and stay uninjured."
The second is that you should never, ever underestimate what rugby league's monsters put themselves through every week.
No comments:
Post a Comment