How Willie Leyshon’s NRL career was cut short by horror injury toll
Willie Leyshon’s injury history reads like a chapter ripped from a hospital ward report. It ruined a promising NRL career that ended at age 26 after stints with the Bears, Storm and Eels. But also helped prepare Leyshon for the battle of his life.
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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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Willie Leyshon’s injury history reads like a chapter ripped from a hospital ward report.
Three knee arthroscopes, two knee reconstructions, a broken arm, a fractured cheekbone, a shoulder reconstruction, a broken leg and a torn groin tendon.
They ruined a promising NRL career that ended at age 26 in 2003 after stints with North Sydney, Melbourne and Parramatta.
But they also helped prepare Leyshon for the battle of his life.
Last year, at 41, Leyshon suffered a heart attack.
The forward who made his top grade debut at just 18 alongside a star-studded Bears pack that included Gary Larson, Billy Moore and David Fairleigh does not reflect on his rugby league journey pondering ‘what ifs’.
Instead the setbacks he faced throughout his 10-year career helped him overcome the biggest obstacle of all — his near death experience.
Part 1: Kyle Stanley carving out a new life
Part 2: The injury that ended Tony Caine
“Mentally, after everything I had gone through during my career it helped me get my head around what happened last year,” Leyshon says.
“I had gone to the doctors and was told I had a virus, then on the Wednesday night I was in bed and I started to get a pain in my chest. It got worse.
“I had a shower about 1.30am and that didn’t help so I had a bath at 4.30am because at this stage I thought I just had a virus.
“At 6.30am I drove myself to hospital and they said there was an irregularity in my heart. At 11.30am I had a full-blown heart attack. I was fit, I didn’t smoke and didn’t drink a lot … I don’t know what would have happened if I didn’t go to hospital.
“When I drove myself to hospital I walked through the door and then walked back to my car telling myself not to be a sook. Then I got out of the car and went back in. I ended up in hospital for 10 days.
Part 3: Yow Yeh still dreams of coaching
Part 4: The regrets of a one-time NRL prodigy
“It’s a condition called cardiomyopathy which is hereditary from my mother — she was diagnosed with it about 15 years ago. When I had the heart attack part of my heart died, so now it doesn’t function properly.’’
Leyshon takes tablets daily to slow his heart rate down and visits the cardiologist twice a year.
Last December Leyshon had a full knee replacement to repair the damage which had even made walking challenging. Doctors are reluctant to perform the operation on someone so young but Leyshon’s quality of life was severely impaired because of the rugby league-related injuries.
“My knee was terrible,” Leyshon says. “I couldn’t bend it 90 degrees and couldn’t walk without being in pain.
“The big thing is that there are a lot more unluckier people than me. I’m not dead. I still get around and function OK.
“I’m feeling fortunate with the opportunities rugby league gave me. There are plenty of people that wanted to play first grade and never got the opportunity. Some people get injured before they get their opportunity. I was lucky to play first grade before I got injured.
Part 5: Ritson frustrated by stars throwing careers away
Part 6: The superstar who never played first grade
“There has been a lot packed into 42 years.”
Leyshon was a year out of school when he made his top grade debut for North Sydney in 1995. He would play just another 40 games in five years as injuries savaged his time at the Bears.
Two weeks after making his debut he injured his shoulder and needed a reconstruction.
He missed all of 1996, while a broken leg ruined his 1997 season.
Leyshon played 24 matches in 1998, including North Sydney’s last ever final – a 23-2 loss to Canterbury.
The real trouble struck the following year when his season ended after starting the first five games for the Bears at lock.
“I remember it clear as day,” Leyshon says. “Just before halftime at Leichhardt Oval I stepped off my right leg and tore my ACL. I remember going off and the doctor in the sheds saying to me ‘we will see you next year’.
“I was never the same after that. I got a lesion under my medial ligament and it wouldn’t allow me to straighten my knee. I had to have another operation to have it removed.
Part 7: Gordon on mistakes that killed his career
Part 8: Gruesome injury turned NRL prodigy into rappe
“Some of the guys that had reconstructions five or six weeks after me were coming in and looking like they were ahead of me. My rehab was really slow. All I wanted to do was play footy but I couldn’t.”
The ill-fated joint venture between Manly and North Sydney continued Leyshon’s run of bad luck. He played 11 games in two seasons for the Northern Eagles, featuring in their first six matches. A knee cartilage injury which needed surgery sidelined him early in 2000, and then he broke his arm in his first game back. Season over.
Five games into 2001 Leyshon faced yet another major setback.
“I went to make a tackle and again my right knee went,” Leyshon says. “I did my ACL again. I struggled badly without being part of the team. During the Northern Eagles I was hardly around. I was either being operated on or rehabilitating.
“I had done it once so I was pretty positive and thought, ‘I may as well go through it again’.
Leyshon joined Melbourne in 2002, playing in all but two of the Storm’s 24 games despite suffering a fractured cheekbone from a head clash with former Bears teammate Mark O’Meley.
Part 9: How ‘toxic’ Tigers ended Moltzen’s career
Part 10: “My footy boot was on the wrong way
“I just think you learn to live with a certain amount of pain,’’ Leyshon says. “Especially the last five years of my life, my knee has gone downhill a lot.
“Going into the 2003 season my knee was just bone on bone. I had an arthroscope but it wouldn’t get any better. It got to the point where my knee was hopeless and physically I wasn’t the same.
“Anti-inflammatories became my best friend.’’
Leyshon retired that February and moved back to Sydney.
“I was comfortable with it because of how hard it was to train or even trying to live normally.”
Leyshon still had an itch though — something that would never go away. So when then Parramatta coach Brian Smith offered him what he thought would be his last shot at the NRL he jumped at it.
“The knee was feeling OK because I wasn’t playing,” Leyshon says.
“I managed to play two more first-grade games but then I tore my quadriceps really badly. I was only on match payments so I pulled the pin again.”
Still clubs circled. A phone call from St George Illawarra coach Nathan Brown on Christmas Day delivered Leyshon one last shot at NRL glory.
Part 11: ‘I’d go to bed crying’: Eel confronted by end of career
“Mentally I thought I could make it,” Leyshon says. “I was fortunate St George gave me a chance. But I was in constant pain. The knee was always swollen. I played about six reserve grade games before I tore the tendon off the bone in my groin.
“I remember driving home from Wollongong in a lot of pain. I’d come to the realisation that I was being stupid now. It was time to stop thinking I could do it anymore. My knee and my body was telling me no.
“It’s really hard to quit because it’s something you chase your whole life and it’s taken away from you.”
Leyshon has adjusted well to life post-football and is now NSW building fastener manager at Bremick.
He still gets reminders of the damage to his knees.
“I was mucking around and playing basketball with my kids in my driveway,” Leyshon says. “I was bouncing the ball, trying to put a move on and then I just collapsed. I did my ACL again. I just laughed. It had become laughable after everything I’d been through.”
Leyshon made a welcome return to the Bears last year as the club’s under-20s coach, having coached Penrith’s Harold Matthews side in 2017.
“I used to think why did these things happen to me,” Leyshon says.
“I love the game and I’m thankful. I have no regrets. This is me at 42, if you spoke to me at 26 I may have been slightly different.”
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