AFL 2021: Inside Collingwood star Jeremy Howe’s long road back from ‘traumatic’ PCL tear

Jeremy Howe has opened up on the moment his world was turned upside down by a horrific knee injury, and the fears he would never get back his incredible leap.

As Jeremy Howe lay slumped on the Giants Stadium turf with nauseating pain beginning to flood his body he was certain he had ripped apart his anterior cruciate ligament.

In the split second it took for a game of on-field chicken to go horribly wrong, Howe was transformed from the game’s most in-form defender to utterly broken.

And yet … wasn’t the pain supposed to subside quickly after an ACL tear?

As Howe was rushed into the rooms by a Collingwood doctor after that Round 4 collision he passed an ACL test and was allowing himself to believe his season might not yet be in tatters.

Then came the F-Bomb that would confirm the most challenging injury of Howe’s career – one that he only just recovered from in recent weeks.

“If I am being honest, it was a pretty traumatic experience,” Howe tells the Herald Sun, publicly recounting that day for the first time.

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Collingwood's Jeremy Howe injures his knee by colliding with Giant Jacob Hopper during a game last season. Picture: Phil Hillyard

“I haven’t been able to look at the vision from the incident even though I have been tagged (on social media) a few times.

“When it happened I assumed it would be an ACL.

“It was quite significant pain and I just assumed it would eventually go, because that’s what everyone says happens. They say it’s a sharp pain and it tails off.

“I was like, ‘This is getting worse’.”

Nearly 11 months on from that disastrous clash with Giant Jacob Hopper, Howe says the doctor’s visceral reaction was the first time he knew he was definitely in deep dark trouble.

“I went to stand up and my knee collapsed to the side, I had completely exploded the medial ligament out of the side,” Howe says.

“And I went down into the rooms and he did the functional tests.

“He did the ACL first and he said, ‘I am confident it’s intact’, and I thought, ‘That’s a really good sign’. Then he went for the PCL and he said, ‘Oh f---’.

“I almost said, ‘You can’t say that to me’, but he said, ‘Your PCL is non-existent’.

“He pushed on the front of the knee and it just went straight back.”

Howe said the medical team then checked his medial ligament and it was “sliding around all over the shop” because it was “completely detached as well”.

“The doc just said it under his breath, ‘oh f---’, but in saying that they were pretty calm,” he recalled.

“It was just that it was that realisation the knee had no support there.”

That expletive aside, Collingwood’s doctors have worked wonders getting Howe back onto the field for Friday night’s clash against the Western Bulldogs.

Publicly, Collingwood and Howe were saying all the right things about his steady progress and chances of even returning for the 2020 finals series.

Howe was dejected after injuring his knee against the Giants. Picture: Phil Hillyard

Privately, it was a hell-ride full of delays, setbacks and moments during which Howe feared he might never get back the explosive spring that has made him the game’s best aerialist, and perhaps the best in AFL history.

“I wanted to get back. Maybe it was more from a mental mindset point of view, but I didn’t want them to shut the door on me and it was pretty important for my mental wellbeing,” he says.

“If the season was still alive that was the best way for me to stay engaged.

“I had surgery and did two weeks in quarantine with my wife and all the partners and kids and that was an experience in itself.

“Then I had the knee brace on for a month.

“Two weeks dead straight, then at 90 degrees, and it was about getting strength back and I got that back quickly but it’s the range I never got back.”

When your cousin is Australian wicketkeeper Matthew Wade, talking in cricket analogies comes naturally.

“I was doing everything possible and unfortunately the scar tissues just gummed up in my knee,” Howe said.

“If you look at a wicket keeper crouching for the ball, I couldn’t even get to halfway. I could get to 90 degrees but anything past that was really sore.

“I ended up doing my hammy up there trying to run and so we just pulled the pin on the season and as soon as the boys got knocked out I had a clean-out of the knee within two days.

“It was what I ultimately needed.

“You talk about a frozen shoulder with reconstructions, that was what happened to my knee.”

A slow summer build

Howe concedes there have been times when he has wondered if his recovery might not allow him to reach the heights – literal and metaphorical – of his soaring career.

“There is no doubt because there have been limiting factors in my knee,” he said.

“At times it is still vulnerable in different spots.

“I had never really been exposed to a major injury and clearly jumping, change of direction, things that come naturally became difficult.

“The high-end speed is something like 95 per cent there, but finally I feel like I am back to normal.

“Getting back was definitely a lot harder than I thought it would be.

“Post-Christmas I had assumed I would be training with the group by then.

“I played the Geelong (trial) game, but I actually hadn’t joined the main group at all until that day.

“And that’s a hard position to be in when guys are ramping up and games are going on. But the Geelong game was a real suck-it-and-see.

“Even three weeks ago we had a discussion and said, ‘are we going to get there for Round 1?’ And I was like, ‘I am all in’. And against Geelong I only came off once.”

Howe said fitness has not been an issue, it was more picking up the match flow.

“Against Richmond (in the March 5 Community Series match) I felt fine. I actually had to come off in the last quarter when I had a humungous blister under my feet,” he said.

“It felt like I had split the webbing under my feet and I told Bucks, and he was like, ‘you have got to be kidding’.

“Last Thursday we had a nice intra-club hitout and I played two quarters and felt really good so I am feeling a hell of a lot more confident.”

Nathan Buckley and Howe celebrate a Magpies win in 2019. Picture: Michael Dodge/Getty Images

Nathan Buckley’s future

Howe says he is in awe of Nathan Buckley’s sense of equilibrium at Collingwood, clearly keen for him to remain as coach past 2021.

But he knows the pressure is on to elevate from good to great in the same manner as triple-premiership great Damien Harwick at Richmond.

“As much as you don’t want to focus on what is said externally, you definitely listen and hear those things,” Howe says.

“Whoever says they can block it out, they are probably kidding themselves.

“We understand those things (Buckley’s contract) take care of themselves with how we play.

“The acid generally comes down on the bigger clubs and Bucks has been exposed to that and doesn’t change the way he carries himself.

“Even as much as he would have been under the pump in 2017, you would rock up and wouldn’t know it.”

Howe says the playing group was grateful when Buckley was reappointed at the time.

“He turned it around and we started playing the way we hoped we would,” he says.

“I feel like the last few years we have been pretty good, but we understand that good doesn’t cut it and Richmond are great.

“Hence why they have won three of the past four flags and it, kind of, inspires us to get better.

“We have changed a few things but we feel like we have got everything we need to contend this year.”

MORE COLLINGWOOD:

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Howe was back in action against Richmond during the Magpies’ pre-season game. Picture: Michael Klein

The way forward

Howe arrived at Collingwood from Melbourne in 2016, a year after Heritier Lumumba left the club for the Demons.

He admits he does not recognise the era or racist incidents at Collingwood that Lumumba, Leon Davis and Andrew Krakouer have so graphically spoken about.

But as a Collingwood vice-captain he says it is not enough to say those incidents are simply in the past.

“I find it hard to discuss past things that have happened at the club,” he says.

“I can only talk about what I know and, unfortunately, I don’t know what happened in the past completely, but I can only promote what we do.

“I feel like we do a lot of things well and Bucks is a really big driver in that.

“Clearly it’s called a ‘Do Better’ report and we feel like we can always educate ourselves more.”

Howe says the Magpies have had a few meetings about “literally being as inclusive and authentic as we can be”.

“We feel like the environment we are in now, we want individuals from all walks of life to come in and be all of themselves,” he says.

“We feel like we do that really well and we talk about it all the time.

“But unfortunately people haven’t felt like that in the past and the club has owned up to it.

“We feel like our environment is a really safe and inclusive one, but we are keen to keep getting better.”