Erin Phillips details her tough mental battle in comeback from ACL injury
Erin Phillips had been here before and knew the long and tough journey that was ahead after a second knee reconstruction. There were moments when her recovery almost became too hard.
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Erin Phillips is eyeing a Round 1 return to AFL Women’s, less than 11 months after rupturing her ACL in last year’s grand final.
But she will not be rushed.
Phillips, a two-time winner of the league’s best and fairest medal, returned to full training in mid-January and is anticipating a return to football early in the season — hopefully next weekend.
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“My rehab is just going as quickly and smart as it can,” Phillips said.
“I’m not going to go out there and put myself at any higher risk. If I’m 100 per cent ready to go and it’s Round 1, then I’m right.”
She said she was currently feeling good, but club medical staff would get the final call ahead of Saturday’s clash with Brisbane.
The 34-year-old was felled in the third quarter of Adelaide’s premiership victory over Carlton at Adelaide Oval in March, and underwent a minor arthroscope in December, which she said was due to a cartilage issue experienced in the original injury.
But once she is back, she does not want the major recovery to have any place in her mind.
“I think that’s the biggest thing for me is once I’m cleared, my knee is gone and no longer exists,” she said.
“That’s it. It’s done with it. I’m 100 per cent ready to go. I don’t want knees spoken about, almost — it’s something of the past.
“I don’t know if I’m going to run out of time to get fit for Round 1, but I’m sure I’m going to have a couple of physios and doctors make that call. If it came down to my vote, I’d sit there and go ‘yep, I’m good’.”
Adelaide has kept the majority of its list together and is favourite to claim a third flag in four seasons.
North Melbourne is also hotly tipped to perform strongly.
But Phillips said that predictions count for little.
“Having eight new faces has already helped our team which is great,” she said.
“But we’ve still got to perform. This competition is a funny one – you never know. This is another great opportunity for us to have another good year, but in saying that, they’re hard to win.”
LONG ROAD BACK FOR PHILLIPS
It was somewhere over the Pacific Ocean that Erin Phillips called for the fourth bag of ice from the aeroplane cabin staff.
She had ruptured her ACL less than three weeks prior during the third quarter of a home Grand Final.
She was the best player that day and the best player in the competition in the best team in AFLW.
The injury cast a pall over Adelaide Oval as the grandstands heaved with 53,034 Crows fans.
Phillips, a former WNBA star who serves in the back office of former club Dallas Wings, had to get back to work — mentally and physically — in the US, meaning then-pregnant partner Tracy and twins Brooklyn and Blake had to fly from Adelaide to Arlington, Texas, with the star’s knee resembling something of a balloon.
“Tracy and I had booked a trip to go to Hawaii for a five-day stop on the way, so we had our team manager fly over with us to Hawaii and helping us out.
“Tracy’s mum flew from Dallas to Hawaii to meet us there,” she recalled.
“Tracy’s mum was the next help from Honolulu to Dallas, so that was really handy.
“I was pretty immobile compared to what I wanted to be with carrying bags and whatnot.
“I had to keep icing through the flight to keep the swelling down and keep moving to stop DVT.
“It was a really quick turnaround from having the surgery to then going back to coaching.”
It was just the beginning.
Phillips knew what she was in for — she’d done it all before.
Playing basketball for Adelaide Lightning in 2007 — with AFLW but a pipe dream — the championship-winning guard undertook a movement she had done “a thousand times” when the ligament went.
Twelve years and two months later, here she was again — a different sport, a different body but an all-too-familiar recovery journey.
“Initially, it was good and bad that I had done one before,” Phillips said.
“The bad part was that I knew exactly what the next 10 to 12 months was going to look like for me, and the amount of work and effort that it was going to require to get back to even being able to perform at a level you want to. That was hard.
“But then it also was really good because I knew what to expect. I knew there was going to be bad days.
“People have a lot worse days, but I mean having extra pain or swelling for what you think is no reason.
“Some days I got up and just thought ‘I can’t be bothered today … I just don’t want to. I want to get up, play with the kids, go coach, come back and not have to worry about how many reps of this’. That really helped mentally prepare for those moments.
“It was probably more benefit … preparing yourself for what was to come.”
She is human.
Despite her super woman reputation, cabinet full of medals and trophies, Phillips wants you to know she is just like the rest of us.
“Sometimes life’s hard without injuries, in general,” she said.
“It’s OK to have those moments that ‘I just can’t give it, today, and that’s OK’.
“That’s just being human, and being strong enough to say ‘I need a moment, I need a day’. I’d be surprised to meet anybody out there who didn’t have those days and moments.
“Some days are just going to be absolutely crap. And I think for me, it was putting these things into perspective. My bad days were relevant. But in the big scheme of things in the world, it wasn’t that bad.”
She admits she was surprised at the breadth of demographics that were on a similar path.
“My last one took 11 months. This one is about the same,” she said.
“I posted enough on Instagram and social media where people could keep getting updates of where I was, and see how I’ve rehabbed along the way. I’ve been really surprised about how many ACLs there are (out there being done).
“Young kids have reached out to me and said ‘I’ve just done my ACL, thank you for posting’ and ‘it’s so good to see you back’. It kind of gives people hope.
“You can really feel, in the early stages when you do an ACL, how am I ever going to function properly again? Let alone play high-level sport. That was probably the real positive — being able to help and say ‘Hey, it’s a terrible injury and it’s annoying and very repetitive and long, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel’.”
ACLs in AFLW have become a serious concern for the league, which continues significant research and has implemented pre-habilitation programs for clubs to implement to reduce the risk of the injury.
“If I could do one thing to prevent it or rehab even quicker, you would do it,” Phillips said.
“I know the AFL and our club is doing a ton of research and pre-injury prevention, pre-training, so it’s not from a lack of trying.”
Her biggest frustration? Linking ACL injuries directly with women playing Australian rules.
“You can do your ACL doing any sport,” Phillips said.
“You can do it just running.
“I did mine playing basketball the first time, in a very simple movement that I would have done 1000 times prior. It’s one of those things where we’ve just got to keep people and the scientists, physios, doctors, finding the right answer.
“Right now, I don’t think there is a clear-cut answer. There’s a lot of theories. Potentially in time we’re going to see what may work.
“I don’t think it’s something we’re ever going to 100 per cent prevent, I just think that’s going to be a part of sport. Men and women do ACLs. We’ll see.”
Phillips, back in full training in mid-January, is already plotting her return.
“Now it’s just getting everything else strong and fit and ready to be able to handle the high intensity that footy requires,” she said.
“My motivation is to get back and be able to play a game that I love playing with girls that I love playing with. I haven’t even thought of a premiership or anything like that.
“For me, it’s literally running back on the field. That’s my biggest motivation to get back.”
Originally published as Erin Phillips details her tough mental battle in comeback from ACL injury