Unique way Bond rugby star is battling back against lockdown

A Gold Coast rugby union player is fighting back.

MAX Dowd is on the stairway to rugby heaven.

The 20-year-old Bond University speedster has for the third season in a row been forced to cool his heels before making a mark in Queensland Premier Rugby.

Coronavirus has club action on ice until July 1 but The Southport School graduate Dowd is not wasting the chance to get fitter and faster.

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A 30-floor staircase is proving the perfect makeshift training ground for the fullback who in terms of speed is “up there in the top three, probably behind Joey Fittock” at Bond.

“We live in an apartment building at Main Beach I have been a bit crazy and smashing the fire escape stairs,” said Dowd, a John Eales Scholarship winner at Bond.

Max Dowd. Picture: Cavan Flynn

“I’ve been running them every second or third day – three sets and I’m pretty stuffed by the last one.

“I try and get each rep, from the bottom to the top, in four minutes.”

It’s a regimen built of past pain.

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An ankle injury and broken jaw have tempered his past two campaigns in the colts and then seniors, meaning 2020 was supposed to be his breakout year.

Gold Coast rugby union player Max Dowd. Picture: STEPHEN TREMAIN@TREMAIN FOCUSED

“Two years out of school, and this is my third year, and I injured my ankle and then broke my jaw and this year, no one is playing yet,” he said.

“It's very frustrating; it feels like if I don’t complete the season I haven’t had a good year.

“This was the year I’d hoped to cement a professional future in rugby, or at least make a bit of a name for myself.”

Max Dowd with ball in under-12s at Southport Tigers league club.

A one-time Titans contract holder and junior at Southport Tigers, where his father Steve Dowd coaches first grade, the architecture student fleetingly contemplated a return to the 13-man code should club rugby fall over.

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“It was a possibility if the union season wasn’t on,” he said.

“It was a worst-case scenario.”

Instead he can dream of the prospect of cementing his role at Bond.

“I played on the wing last year but I think I’m a fullback long-term,” he said.

“Hopefully if I can build on my weight I can have that flexibility to play elsewhere in the backline.”

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