Richmond midfielder Dion Prestia reveals how he recovered from golden staph infection to return for finals
Dion Prestia thought his finals dream was alive — until a major setback nearly derailed his hopes of playing in another Richmond premiership. The tough Tiger details how he’s overcome a golden staph infection to return.
Richmond
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As Dion Prestia’s ankle crumpled under him in Kysaiah Pickett’s twisting tackle way back in Round 4, a terrible vision flooded through his mind.
That unmistakeable popping sound which signalled an eventual syndesmosis tear had Prestia fearing his season was very much over.
“I knew I was in an awkward position and I heard it pop and my first thought was when Michael Barlow broke his leg and he went to stand up and it buckled under him,” Prestia said.
“It was a pretty weird feeling. I rolled over and checked if my ankle was still pointing straight and it was but I went into the rooms to see if I could run and I couldn’t. The doctor said straight away I had done a syndesmosis and he was right.”
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With bags literally packed to fly out of Victoria to Queensland the next morning as the AFL exodus began, Prestia was suddenly in an operating theatre having that ankle surgically repaired.
His good mate Toby Nankervis was having identical surgery that same day, while presumably somewhere in the same hospital Tom Lynch’s broken hand was repaired before his chartered plane to the Gold Coast that same night.
For Prestia, what should have been a routine eight-week repair instead turned into a series of disastrous setbacks that he believed would end his season.
As he revealed to the Herald Sun for the first time, the infection that set back his 2020 campaign was actually a serious golden staph infection that saw him hospitalised for a week.
On Friday night, the Kayo ambassador will play his first game since that July 5 contest aware he has rode his luck to be playing at all this year.
Yet one of footy’s most consistent finals performers says a month of running plus a regime that has seen him drop several kilograms has him primed to hit the ground running.
“Obviously I was coming up to join the hub after the Melbourne game and instead I was able to do my rehab with Tony Nankervis,” he said.
“It’s pretty crazy how things changed so quickly but that sums up 2020 for a lot of people.
“We got here, I did my isolation in Southport and then a week after that it got infected again.
“I had done a couple of Alter-G sessions, three of them and then ran on the field for the first time and it felt awesome.
“But pretty much after noon I couldn’t put any weight onto it and it was looking pretty red and then that night I was pretty much in bed in agony.
“It was a shocking feeling, more painful than the initial injury. I woke up at 3am and called the doc. I had a week in hospital and then there was the photo of me (walking laps) with the bum bag, so I carried (a drip) around the hotel for two weeks and the nurse would come in and change my antibiotics for me and I am still on them.
“The infection wasn’t in the joint, it was sitting on top of the ropes and plugs on one side (that hold the tibia and fibula bones together) and they pretty much pulled the ropes through and redrilled the holes that had been made from the ropes being there and flushed my ankle.
“It was pretty rough walking around with a cord hanging out of my arm but it got better pretty quickly.”
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As he lay in his hospital bed counting off the days until finals, his rehab buddy was back on the field for the first time in Round 14 and Prestia was doing the mental arithmetic about his shrinking window to return.
“When I went back into hospital I thought, ‘It might be pretty hard to get back’, but the advice was that my syndesmosis had more time to recover and I am really surprised how I have pulled up,” he said.
“I have trained really strongly over the last couple of weeks and lost some weight to give the ankle a rest. I have done everything I can over the last month.”
For a player dubbed “The Human Meatball”, even a small loss from his usual playing weight of 82.5kg-83kg to 81kg is about leaving no stone unturned to cover the ground this October.
Nankervis will take up the cudgels against Stef Martin and Oscar McInerney given Ivan Soldo’s ACL tear in a battle where the Lions will believe they can gain clearance ascendancy.
“Yeah, well I think Toby has probably enjoyed being the one ruckman,” Prestia says of the often-discounted Nankervis.
“I haven’t played with a more competitive player in my life than Toby. He’s played in two premierships in the last three years and it will be interesting to see what we do when he needs a break but it’s a great challenge.”
Dustin Martin might head forward early to cover the absence of Tom Lynch but if Prestia is honest, he knows the club’s dual Norm Smith Medallist will run his own show.
“It will be interesting to see what he does. Last year he played mostly forward in that final against Brisbane and probably with myself and Shane Edwards and Shai (Bolton) coming in this week he might have some time up forward but he’s so damaging around the midfield we want him there too,” he said.
“I think probably one of our greatest assets is we have so many weapons we can go to.
“If we need we can push Shane or Shai forward and Jack Graham, who signed up during the week, he has been playing such awesome footy over the last few weeks.”
*The 2020 AFL Finals series are available to watch live and on-demand on Kayo.
TOUGH TIGER’S PLAN TO TURN DEVASTATION TO ELATION
— Sam Landsberger
A devastated Jack Graham was sitting on the MCG interchange bench last year when he received a phone call.
“It was ‘Dimma; (coach Damien Hardwick) calling from the box and he said, ‘Can you go out there and play a part?’” Graham told News Corp.
The down-and-dirty midfielder had his left shoulder strapped by club doctor Greg Hickey and was growing numb from painkillers.
In the first quarter of the preliminary final, Graham’s shoulder was yanked out of its socket as he laid a desperate tackle on Geelong’s Tom Atkins.
The Tigers tested it out and it still felt as loose as a gossiper’s tongue.
“But Dimma wanted me to help with a rotation,” Graham said.
“I thought, ‘Stuff it, I’ll get back out there’.
“I went forward and just tried to block or take a man so the forwards could have a jump at it.
“I couldn’t really feel it, but it did slip out a few more times.”
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A winged Graham played out the match, spending more minutes on the ground than five other players as the Tigers overpowered the Cats with a withering second half.
“I’m going to be honest, we packed him up at halftime,” Hardwick said after the Tigers reached the Grand Final.
“Where it ends up with Jack we’re not too sure.
“But what I know is it will be a chapter in our history that has a massive positive thing for Jack Graham, because that effort was simply incredible.”
It ended up delivering the fairytale of the season as debutant Marlion Pickett walked into Richmond’s Grand Final line-up.
But the flip side of the Pickett romance was Graham’s heartbreak.
Graham, 22, spent preliminary final night awake staring at the ceiling, his mind and shoulder aching in equal parts.
“It wasn’t until that night that it really sunk in that I won’t be playing … and also the pain,” Graham said.
“After those painkillers wore off it really started to throb. I knew deep down that I’ve got one shoulder — it’s probably not smart to play.”
Graham’s partner Jordy May took a few days off work in Grand Final week to comfort him.
“It did play on my mind for a while, and for all of the off-season,” Graham said.
“As good as it was being part of it, you knew you weren’t on that 22.
“Especially as I would’ve played in it.
“It was hard to swallow, but at the same time I was rapt for blokes like Jayden Short, Liam Baker, Shai Bolton and Ivan Soldo.”
Graham’s 2020 season can be sorted into three boxes.
In Rounds 1-3 he played 71 per cent on the wing, averaging 11.3 disposals, and then got dropped.
In Rounds 6-8 he played 90 per cent in the midfield, averaging 12 disposals, and then got dropped.
And since Round 12 he has played a 60-40 midfield-forward split, averaged 18.2 disposals and blossomed into one of Richmond’s best players.
“I feel like this new role I’m playing really suits the style of game that I play,” Graham said.
“I’m more of a half-forward that comes up to the contest and one of my strengths is my workrate in and around the ball, and then on the spread on the outside.”
Speak to anyone at Tigerland about Graham and “workrate” is the first thing they talk about.
“His workrate is incredible. We show it on the tape weekly,” Hardwick said.
Graham blows up both the GPS and opponents, averaging 11.4km per game this season.
But it is his “power runs” through the middle which most impress captain Trent Cotchin.
“Put an isocam on him for a game — it’s pretty impressive to watch,” Cotchin said.
“The thing we love about ‘Fridge’ is he gets down and dirty and has a crack.”
In the words of ruckman Toby Nankervis: “Elite runner, elite trainer and elite preparer” and “his last six or seven weeks have just been unbelievable”.
Draft followers wouldn’t be surprised.
In 2016 it seemed no prospect tried harder than Graham.
He captained South Australia, won the Larke Medal as the best Under-18 player, was named All-Australian and played senior football for North Adelaide.
It was a resume fit for a first-rounder.
Yet Graham fell to the Tigers at pick No. 53.
Some clubs focused on too heavily on how hard Graham had pushed himself, and wondered how much growth was left given his mature body.
Inside midfielders including Will Brodie (pick No. 9, Gold Coast), Sam Powell-Pepper (No. 18, Port Adelaide) and Kobe Mutch (No. 42, delisted by Essendon) all went before him.
But Hardwick fell in love with Graham at a pre-draft interview, and the Tigers determined that the ball winner’s elite running could be his X-factor quality.
Their South Australian expert also noted the state hadn’t seen such a remarkable skipper in some time.
Fast-forward four years and Carlton, Essendon and Adelaide – clubs which shared 10 picks before Graham was taken in 2016 – queued up to poach him.
“There’s a reason a lot of clubs chased him,” Hardwick said.
“The thing I love about him this year is his ball-winning ability has really improved, he’s taken that to the next level.
“He could’ve got a lot more money at other places, but he chose to stay for less, which is a sign of the bloke he is.”
Graham put pen to paper during the pre-finals, signing a three-year extension with a trigger for 2024.
If Graham hits that trigger then his Tigers deal won’t fall too far short of Carlton or Essendon’s offers which, it would be fair to say, were sizeably larger than Adelaide’s.
When Jordy arrived on the Gold Coast, Graham checked out of Richmond’s KDV Sports hub and into the family set up at Royal Pines, where the Bombers were also staying.
That brought Graham under the same roof as coaches Ben Rutten and Blake Caracella, whom he knew from Punt Rd, while he also spoke to the Blues and Crows on the phone.
“It was good to get to know them on a deeper level and see what sort of coach Teaguey (Carlton’s David Teague) is,” Graham said.
“But Richmond’s home. They had faith in me and picked me up four years ago, and it’s been a bit of a fairytale ever since.
“A few articles started popping up (about other clubs circling) and I just wanted my teammates to know I was invested, especially the coaches, and I couldn’t wait to get the deal done and tell them.
“It’s a weight off my shoulders leading into finals. I never wanted to leave, and I was rapt once the deal was done.”
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Originally published as Richmond midfielder Dion Prestia reveals how he recovered from golden staph infection to return for finals