How Collingwood veteran Tyson Goldsack went from ACL victim in March to finals linchpin in September

FROM the moment he was given the news about his knee injury, Tyson Goldsack was already plotting his 2018 return. Go inside the stunning recovery, including the heartwrenching five minute chat that changed everything.

Tyson Goldsack has completed a remarkable ACL recovery. Picture: Getty Images

TYSON Goldsack has demanded a meeting in the doctor’s office at the Collingwood Football Club.

The Pies’ laid-back veteran is fuming. He’s been told another comeback has been aborted.

“I don’t want anyone to talk. I just want to put my case to you’,” Goldsack begins.

It’s Thursday, August 23 — two days out from the club’s last VFL regular-season match — and time is running out for Goldsack.

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His fairytale comeback from a March knee reconstruction has suddenly gone pear-shaped.

If Goldsack’s rapid recovery from a torn ACL against the Western Bulldogs in a pre-season game has not broken the rules of major knee surgery rehabilitation, it has bent them.

But now, a return that has become Goldsack’s obsession is in danger of collapsing.

He’s trying to shake off a back injury that flared when he tried to stuff three months’ worth of training into a four-week period.

Tyson Goldsack injured his knee against the Western Bulldogs in a pre-season game. Picture: Michael Klein

It is a big, but necessary, final hurdle if Goldsack is to get a block of VFL games in before the second-tier season ends.

“The chances were something was going to give and he ended up having a disco back which held him up,” Collingwood’s strength and conditioning manager Kevin White says.

“From a sports science and conditioning perspective we were worried about a soft tissue injury because he’d done this big bank of work, then went into this trough for a fortnight with his back and was now going to ramp it back up again.

“We told Tyson: ‘You’re going to do another Saturday (training) session instead of that VFL game’ and he basically demanded a meeting.”

Sitting opposite White is Dr Ruben Branson, rehab co-ordinator Ben Shipperd and physios David Francis and Lachlan Fooks.

Goldsack begins to pour his heart out.

He says he respects the science and soft tissue risk but he feels strong and he needs to get his footy touch back.

“But the big thing, which probably pulled on the heartstrings, was we’d seen the effort, the appetite and the hours he’d put in over five and a half months,” White says.

“It would have been heartbreaking for him to get to the finish line and not quite cross it.

“It was pretty emotional because we all love and respect Goldie. It was almost how passionate he was presenting his case that swayed it.

“No one in the room was going to be strong-willed enough to stick to their guns and it ended with us shaking hands and telling him to get ready for the game against Sandringham that Saturday.”

At 31, Goldsack has heard enough of that in a 162-game career where he’s had to scrap for everything over 12 seasons pot-holed by injuries and form issues, with the 2010 flag the clear highlight.

Tyson Goldsack in action during his VFL return. Picture: Michael Klein

His lion-hearted qualifying final return against West Coast, in which he held Eagles spearhead Josh Kennedy to two goals, is seen as a victory for one of the good guys of the game.

“As soon as I did the knee, I knew I wanted to come back this year. I always had that mindset,” Goldsack tells the Herald Sun this week.

“Whether other people believed it would happen or not didn’t worry me. I had my heart set on it.”

Like so many before him, Goldsack’s left knee popped in innocuous circumstances in the Pies’ second JLT Community Series game against the Western Bulldogs in Moe on March 10.

Convinced he’d copped nothing more than a hyperextension, Goldsack had scans the next morning.

He then called Pies physio Fooks, who suggested he come in to the club and start getting himself right for the season-opener against Hawthorn in two weeks’ time.

“We were talking and he said, ‘Ruben is coming in now’ and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s coincidental. How good?’,” Goldsack recalls.

“But Ruben had already seen the scans at home and was coming in to tell me face-to-face.

“He said, ‘Look mate, it’s not great. You’ve done your ACL. It’s gone’.

Tyson Goldsack was everywhere against the Eagles. Picture: Getty Images

“That’s was difficult. From thinking I was playing Round 1 to thinking when surgery is, that hit pretty hard in that moment. It was pretty raw.”

Contrary to reports, Goldsack has suffered a complete rupture of the ligament. There is no Dale Morris partial-tear escape, this is a hamburger with the lot.

And with knee surgeon Julian Feller away overseas on a skiing holiday, Goldsack would have to wait 12 days before going under the knife.

But Feller’s vacation would prove almost as valuable as his orthopaedic skills.

As inconceivable as it sounds, it gives Goldsack time to do a mini pre-season in preparation for surgery.

“There’s not a lot of research behind it, but some people suggested if you actually go in with a training load pre-surgery you can have better results other side,” White said.

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“‘Goldie took that pretty literally and two days post-injury he was back in the gym.

“A day or two later he put out a personal best on the box squat, squatting 220kg.

“Once Goldie saw how he could perform with the knee out of action, he thought, ‘Well, I’ll go aggressive with my rehab and there’s no reason I can’t play again this season’.”

Goldsack eventually went under the knife at Richmond’s Epworth Hospital on March 22 — hours before Richmond and Carlton opened the season down the road at the MCG.

Historically, a piece of hamstring tendon has been used to replace the torn ligament, but Feller went with a quad tendon graft, said in some circles to be stronger and more durable.

Tyson Goldsack never stopped fighting after his ACL injury. Picture: Getty Images

“His knee behaved well after surgery and right from the start we didn’t rule out an attempt to come back this season,” Feller says.

Back at the club, Goldsack set about relentlessly climbing the rungs of the recovery ladder.

“In my head it was just about getting comfortable being uncomfortable,” Goldsack says.

“After every session I’d want to be in a better spot leaving the club than I was walking into it, and I did that every day for four months.”

White says a career in which nothing had come easy, combined with his age, gave Goldsack the best preparation for what was to come.

“Tyson has built up a massive bank of resilience. Having his little girl (Harriet) almost changed him and perhaps showed he was coming to the end of his career and he wants to make the most of every single opportunity he gets,” White says.

“He was really aggressive and proactive, saying things like, ‘I don’t have to fall in line with what literature suggests’, and ‘I’m going to shape my own future’, and ‘You guys put a program around me that will help me get back quicker’.”

Goldsack spoke to Sandor Earl after the Melbourne Storm centre had returned from his reconstruction in six months, but it was the fire within that fuelled his recovery.

Tyson Goldsack with the 2010 premiership cup.

“You need to want it. You’ve got to then put in the hard yards,” Goldsack says.

“The support staff here and everything they’ve done has been incredible and without them it would not have been impossible.”

Goldsack escaped on a European holiday with wife Chelsea and Harriet in June, pounding the pavement of Positano, Sicily and around Greece.

“It came at a really good time. We’d started running, I was still doing a lot of weights and it was starting to get a bit monotonous,” he says.

“It was just the three of us. It was really nice. On my phone I think I had more than 250,000 steps through the trip so all that helps, up the stairs and carrying Harry around.”

Goldsack has spoken to Collingwood list manager Ned Guy about his desire to play-on next year, with the Pies and the player’s management working on a new one-year extension that now appears a formality.

So too, does another huge job on-field, with the key forward assignments not getting any easier for the rejuvenated defender — on Saturday night he appears destined for a match-up with Jeremy Cameron.

“Having the guys around me and what they do to support each other is huge. I’ve just been so happy to come in, help them and stand up when I need to,” he says.

From knee victim in March to finals linchpin in September, Goldsack has certainly done that.

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