My footy boot was on the wrong way: Pat O’Hanlon’s gruesome end
Pat O’Hanlon still walks with a limp, pain medication is a constant and he still needs a hip replacement and ankle fusion. The 27-year-old takes us back to the horror injury which ended his NRL career all too soon.
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Part 2: The injury that ended Tony Caine
Part 3: Yow Yeh still dreams of coaching
They were the lucky ones — blessed with talent, passionate and on a path that led to riches and fame. Then it all came crashing down and they had to rebuild lives that would never be the same. Michael Carayannis continues our series profiling rugby league players whose careers ended all too soon.
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Pat O’Hanlon still walks with a limp.
Pain medication is a constant, and the 27-year-old needs a hip replacement and ankle fusion.
Doctors believe O’Hanlon will have another hip replacement before his 55th birthday.
O’Hanlon’s NRL career ended abruptly five years ago, midway through his first finals match for Canterbury.
The Mackay Brothers junior had played 32 matches and was just establishing himself as a first grader when his ankle became crushed under an innocuous tackle involving Melbourne Storm trio Will Chambers, Cooper Cronk and Jesse Bromwich.
Many of the photographs from the incident are too graphic to ever be published.
“I knew in myself that would be all she wrote. I thought it straight away,” O’Hanlon says.
“Being six foot five and having a lower limb injury, the reality of it was this is going to be pretty hard to come back from.
“Firstly I looked down and my footy boot was facing the other way. From there I knew anatomically that’s not correct. I felt a ball in my sock where the tibia was. They put my ankle back in place on the field which was painful.
“I was getting carted from the field and we went past my dad (Matt) who was on the sideline. They’d taken my sock off and weren’t letting me look down at it and I asked Dad what happened. He said, ‘don’t worry son it’s just a flesh wound’.
“He has always been able to make light of a dark situation. Then I looked down and I saw the bone sticking out.”
The injury not only robbed him of his career but ended his hopes of playing for Canterbury in the 2014 grand final.
O’Hanlon was unable to put any weight on his foot for four months, having undergone three operations to try to repair the damage. Doctors had told him he would not be able to play for 18 months and in the back of his mind O’Hanlon knew his career was over.
“I kind of wanted to move on but I had so many people around telling me to give it another crack,” O’Hanlon says. “I started to believe there was a possibility I could.
“I came back after 12 months. I could tell I wasn’t myself. It wasn’t first game jitters, I just didn’t have any explosion or range in my left leg. I couldn’t get low to make tackles.
“I knew after the first game I wasn’t playing first grade again.”
O’Hanlon persisted through another pre-season heading into the 2016 season, unable to let go of the camaraderie of the dressing room. Not only was he no longer a first grader, but O’Hanlon was struggling to cut it in reserve grade.
“It was a tough thing to tell yourself that I wasn’t good enough,” O’Hanlon says. “That was the reality. I wasn’t good enough anymore. I wasn’t even good enough to play reserve grade.
“In 2016 I played the first few games in reserve grade and then I kept saying I had to sit out next week. The trainers kept asking me when I was coming back but I was like, ‘I can’t run, I can barely walk’. I knew within myself it was done but to manifest it outwards it was pretty tough. Telling Des Hasler was tough.”
Hasler had offered O’Hanlon an opportunity after he was part of Ricky Stuart’s infamous overhead 12 the year before. He and 11 teammates featured on an overhead projector, brutally told they had no future at the Eels.
“I remember people being totally disenfranchised with it but to me it was just business,” O’Hanlon says. “There was probably a better way in letting people go. I don’t know what he wanted to get out of that. I’m not knocking Ricky Stuart’s character but I just think it could’ve been managed a bit better.
“It was a crisis meeting because we were getting towelled up. When you speak about player welfare there is a better way to do it.”
O’Hanlon was signed by Parramatta at just 17, following older brother Jake to the club. He’d had a decorated junior career playing alongside the likes of Ben Hunt, Josh McGuire and Andrew McCullough in various Queensland under-16, under-18 and Australian Schoolboys sides.
“I got called by Daniel Anderson to make my debut against the Warriors as a 19-year old in 2010,” O’Hanlon says. “Morning of the game it was freezing and teaming with rain. Daniel Anderson knocked on the door and said ‘we aren’t going to play you today’. I wasn’t bitter, I was just happy to have been in the mix.”
O’Hanlon’s season was over the next week during an under-20s game when his shoulder was shattered while trying to tackle then Bronco Tariq Sims. O’Hanlon made his debut the next season and played 21 games for the Eels before Stuart’s axe fell at the end of 2013.
“When I look at my career, I went from being cast aside from a club who had finished with the wooden spoon to being part of a grand final team,” O’Hanlon says. “I’m pretty proud about that.
“That outweighed me going through an injury. It was the fact and pride I took in that rapid turnaround and to get to that point, even though I knew I’d probably played my last game.”
The injury has hindered O’Hanlon’s lifestyle but he has made a successful switch to the corporate world, having been sounded out by new Australian Rugby League Commission member Mark Coyne.
Coyne is CEO of Employers Mutual Limited where O’Hanlon manages a portfolio of psychological injuries within NSW Government agencies. He is also in the midst of completing a masters of business administration degree.
“My daily living is impeded,” O’Hanlon says. “That’s not to get sympathy but it’s the reality.
“Some days I get frustrated with it. We have ergonomic desks at work. If I sit down for a while my hip will get really sore. If I stand up my ankle gets sore. I’m the highest usage ergonomics in the office.
“I just have to deal with that pain. With how hectic life is I just can’t stop everything and get those operations done. I don’t have the finances nor the time.
“The only way I can manage it is with pain medication. That’s not a long-term plan for anything.
“I had a great time with the guys I played footy with. There was an opportunity to make a real fist of rugby league for five or six years.
“As one door closes another one opens and aside from the pain management side of things my career is in a good place.”
Originally published as My footy boot was on the wrong way: Pat O’Hanlon’s gruesome end
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