Panthers star Bryce Cartwright defies medical opinion that he would never run again

PENRITH prodigy Bryce Cartwright shouldn’t be playing in the NRL anymore. In fact, he shouldn’t even be able to run.

Panthers young gun Bryce Cartwright pictured at Pepper stadium.

BRYCE Cartwright has a large scar running down the outside of his right ankle. This, supposedly, should be mark that finished him. The final reminder of an NRL career ended on seven games.

“I only found out the other day, too,’’ Cartwright tells The Daily Telegraph. “It’s scary.

“Apparently I shouldn’t even be able to run.”

Almost a year since suffering a horrific break in his right ankle, Penrith prodigy Cartwright has revealed the sensational diagnosis suggesting he would never play again.

Only in recent weeks has the young Panthers forward learned he was never expected to run again — let alone return to the NRL — after enduring a break likened to “a car crash”.

It’s understood Dr Martin Sullivan, the ankle specialist who operated on Cartwright, initially kept the diagnosis from the then teenager, with Penrith officials concerned how the news would effect him mentally.

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Cartwright’s doctors kept the full extent on his injury form him.

“And who knows what would have happened had they told me,’’ Cartwright continues. “I mean, when one of the world’s leading ankle surgeons says you will never run again ... who knows how I would’ve handled it.

“I know the break, it was like a car crash. I lost all the cartilage, broke the bone, tore every ligament ... the morning after I did it the entire leg was black.

“Dr Sullivan said had never seen anything like it.”

Yet worse was what the surgeon never said.

A secret Cartwright learned only recently, and accidentally, after Penrith lower grader Kieran Moss also had a consultation with the Sydney medico.

“Apparently they were chatting and the doc said ‘oh, how is Bryce going’,’’ Cartwright continues. “Kieran said I was going OK, which is when he told him how I was never expected to run again.

“I couldn’t believe it.

“So the next day I went and asked our physios and they said, yeah, it was true. No one wanted to tell me because they were afraid of how the news might affect me.”

Cartwright is starting to show the form that made him on of the NRL’s hottest properties.

Perhaps they shouldn’t have worried.

Especially when you consider Cartwright is the type of fella whose right forearm carries the tattoo ‘Never Give Up’.

A forward who refused to broken while limping around on crutches for three months. Who spent another six weeks putting needles, every night, into his own stomach for the prevention of blood clots

“So it was certainly a scary time,’’ he concedes

“For a long while I was scared of ... well, losing something. You know, not being good enough when I came back.

“I thought about Taniela Tuiaki. How he was tearing it up with Wests Tigers, had those ankle problems, and was finished. So you worry.

“Even when I did come back, the first couple of weeks I felt like shit. For a while I didn’t think I would play NRL this year.”

Yet on Friday night at Pepper Stadium, Cartwright will continue his amazing comeback when he takes on South Sydney in Friday Night Football.

And while he has vivid memories of the incident involving Bulldogs forward Greg Eastwood — “he tackled me, my leg got twisted up and the whole thing went numb from my hip down to my foot” — Cartwright insists there are no lingering problems either mental or physical.

“The only thing I’ve had to do is play a bit lighter than I wanted this year,’’ he says. “Initially, I bulked up to 114kg.

“But coming back from the surgery, it was too much for my ankle to carry. So I’ve stripped back down to 107. But ideally, within the next three years I want to be back up there. I can carry that around easy.”