Hurt Locker: The players who defied the odds and serious injury to play in an AFL grand final
Steven May joined the ‘Hurt Locker Club’ when he played through serious injury on grand final day. Relive the other superhuman efforts on the biggest stage.
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Melbourne star Steven May has joined the hurt locker club.
The Demons defender’s remarkable effort to get up and play in Melbourne’s grand final win with a 6cm tear in his right hamstring – which is usually a six-week injury lay-off – sees him join an illustrious group.
There are many that have battled on after getting hurt during a grand final, but here are some of the best stories of the players that knowingly took serious injury into the biggest game of the year, aided by painkillers, determination and will.
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NIGEL LAPPIN – 2003
How then Brisbane Lions star Nigel Lappin managed to get up and play in the 2003 grand final is the stuff of legend.
Lappin suffered cracked ribs in the preliminary final, which Jason Akermanis made public knowledge at a media conference a few days later, and coach Leigh Matthews was ready to draw a line through him.
“I remember on the Tuesday before the grand final at the Gabba and Nigel could hardly get out of the car, because anyone that’s had cracked ribs knows the first few days you feel like you’re going to die,” Matthews said on Fox Footy in 2011.
“But the pain management specialist at the Wesley Hospital thought they could deaden his whole rib, so we thought ‘oh well, let’s give it a try’ because he was a wonderful player.
“So we got to the Friday night and you have to test him and they needled him up.
“We made it as physical as we could make it and he seemed to survive that fine.
“We got to the following morning and we got about an hour before the game when the team list has to be in and Nigel said to me: ‘I think I’m all right but I can’t seem to take deep breaths.’
“Chris Scott as the emergency is warming up and I’m thinking ‘it’s an hour before a grand final and I don’t even know who’s playing, this is ridiculous.’
“Nigel eventually said ‘I think I can give it a go’ (and he played).
“It turns out he had played the game with a minor punctured lung, which I think he did in the fitness test on Friday night.
“But he played and we won and everything was good, and if we lost we would have been slayed.”
Lappin – who was moved to halfback – finished with 19 disposals and played in his third consecutive premiership win.
LUKE HODGE – 2008
OUT of all the famous grand final injury stories, Hawthorn champion Luke Hodge in 2008 is one of the most mysterious.
The reason is because Hodge – an old school football type who subscribes to the adage that if you’re out there then you’re fit – has never confirmed the injury.
Although, there is at the very least a strong rumour that Hodge played through the pain of busted ribs on the way to the Norm Smith Medal and his first premiership medal.
“I can vividly remember going past Luke Hodge only seconds before the bounce of the 2008 grand final and belting him in the ribs,” former Cat Cameron Mooney wrote in a 2017 Geelong Advertiser column.
“It almost broke my hand because Hodgey had this massive guard over his rib cage.
“We knew he had busted ribs and we knew he was going to try to stand in front of me for most of the day.
“When I went to him he just didn’t flinch. It didn’t faze him.
“Every time the ball would come in and he was backing into a pack, I was telling him I was going to run through him and hurt him, but every time he was knocked over he would get up and give me a wink and a smile.”
In 2012, when asked by Nine newspapers if he carried a rib injury into the grand final, Hodge replied: “I was OK.”
Asked again in a different way, he again replied: “I was OK.”
According to the story, even Hodge’s father is in the dark about the extent of the injury.
DARREN MILLANE – 1990
TO this day, Collingwood fans still talk about the late Darren Millane’s courage in 1990.
In the year the Magpies would break their 32-year premiership drought, Millane’s season appeared over in Round 20 when he broke his thumb.
But the man who became known as the raging bull from Victoria Park refused to yield and said he could play on painkillers, which he did for five consecutive games.
“He would be rebreaking it every game,” former Magpies football boss Graeme ‘Gubby’ Allan said in the 1990 Final Story documentary.
Matthews remembered being in awe of Millane’s determination.
“You should have seen the pain he was in post games, because he might have been able to inject it up but for five consecutive weeks he went through campaign of knowing post-game he’s just going to be in this incredible agony once the painkillers started to wear off so they’d replaster it again,” Matthews said.
Fittingly, Millane had the ball in his hands when the siren sounded on grand final day.
A year later, almost to the day, he would be tragically killed in a car accident at Albert Park.
STEVE JOHNSON – 2011
Geelong coach Chris Scott immediately thought Steve Johnson was done.
It was preliminary final day in 2011 and Geelong was always in control against West Coast at the MCG, but the story very quickly became all about ‘Stevie J’ when the Cats star down clutching his knee.
“It looked awful and like a classic ACL at first glance, so I didn’t hold out much hope at all for playing in the grand final,” Scott said in the 2011 AFL documentary ‘Two hours’.
Johnson was equally concerned.
“The pain was excruciating … I’d torn all the connective tissue away from my kneecap, so basically my kneecap was fairly loose and next week was the longest week of my life,” Johnson said.
The ‘will he or won’t he play’ became the story of grand final week ahead of Geelong’s clash with Collingwood.
When Johnson wasn’t in the hyperbaric chamber that week, he was icing the knee every two hours non-stop.
News crews in helicopters watched his every move from above a closed session at GMHBA Stadium when Johnson got out onto the track with the aid of painkillers on the Wednesday.
On grand final day his knee was puffy when we woke up, and he then tried to hide his limp went he went down for the team breakfast at the Crowne Plaza hotel.
By midmorning, it was crunch time.
“I got him on the phone at about 10.30 and I said ‘mate I can’t leave it any longer, I’ve got to come up and see you,’” Scott said.
Johnson suddenly moved faster than he had all week.
“I had a big blow-up ice thing on my knee and I just whipped that straight off and quickly hid it in the corner and answered the door,” Johnson said.
He convinced his coach he was right to play.
“He did well … it’s not the first time he’d pulled the wool over my eyes I’m sure,” Scott laughed.
After getting injected at the ground, a Cats physio told Johnson he could do a lot more damage by playing.
“I said ‘I don’t care if I ever walk again, as long as I get this premiership,’” Johnson said.
And that he did, kicking four goals in Geelong’s 38-point grand final win.
ANTHONY STEVENS – 1999
BY all rights, Anthony Stevens should probably not have played in the 1999 grand final.
In North Melbourne’s preliminary final win over Brisbane, the man who’d go on to play 292 games suffered a nasty injury.
“I had a fracture in my heel on my right foot and I’d torn all the ligaments in my ankle,” he told Fox Footy years later.
“I’m pretty sure it was a good 14 to 16-week injury.”
Determined to play in the premiership decider against Carlton, then Kangaroos coach Denis Pagan dangled a carrot in front of Stevens.
“Denis to his credit said: ‘son, if you can actually get on the training track for 10 minutes on Thursday, I’ll play you,’” Stevens said.
“So I was pretty determined to get on there.”
Stevens failed to get through the grand final, but ironically it had nothing to do with the heel or the ankle.
His day ended when he ripped his pectoral muscle off the bone, but before that he’d had 12 kicks and the Roos went on to claim their second flag in four years.
DALE MORRIS 2016
The Western Bulldogs veteran couldn’t hold it in any longer.
For a month, Dale Morris and the Bulldogs medical staff held a tightly kept secret that he’d suffered a broken back in Round 23 and played through to the 2016 grand final with the injury.
After the exhilaration of being a part of the Bulldogs’ first premiership side in 62 years, Morris had to tell the world.
“I’ve had some injuries, yes,” he told Channel 7 after the game.
“I may have broken my back in the last game against Freo, but who cares now.”
He recorded 15 disposals on grand final day, and was involved in one of the decisive moments, laying a tackle on Lance Franklin that allowed the ball to spill to Tom Boyd who goaled in the final term.
“We have been managing it since then and keeping it pretty quiet and he’s a pretty tough character so he needed a bit of assistance to get through,” Bulldogs doctor Gary Zimmerman said at the time.
“He had fractures on two levels which he did in the Fremantle game.
“He was challenged but he was pretty good in the last two weeks and it settled down. It was a great effort, he is a tough man.’’
ALAN DIDAK – 2010
Collingwood came clean about Alan Didak’s shoulder injury after the 2010 grand final replay, revealing the forward played the entire finals series with a torn pectoral muscle.
Didak’s season looked over when the then 27-year-old suffered the serious injury in Round 21.
Instead he rested for a week before returning with a heavily strapped left shoulder.
“This man has played with a pectoral muscle that’s ripped straight off his bone,” Malthouse told Collingwood fans at Gosch’s Paddock the day after the grand final replay.
“That’s why one’s tough and the other one’s floppy.
“What an amazing effort.
“ … (Didak’s) shoulder (injury) was something that scared the life out of me.
“He (the surgeon) said yes, he should have it operated on straight away, but it’s not without possibility that we can wait.”
Didak was largely quiet in the drawn grand final, but he had 21 disposals and kicked two goals in the replay.
“He played with an injury that would put most people on work cover on a year,” then Magpies president Eddie McGuire quipped afterwards.
Basil Zempilas explains story behind grand final blunder
Basil Zempilas tried to make up for his mistake and get premiership winning Melbourne coach Simon Goodwin back on stage to make a speech after his grand final blooper last Saturday.
Goodwin was denied the on-stage opportunity to deliver his message of thanks before accepting the premiership cup with his captain Max Gawn in Perth.
Zempilas, who was the grand final MC, has opened up on the “regrettable” moment and said he tried to make up for it as the Demons celebrated their drought-breaking win.
“As they were having the team photo, I asked one of the people to go and get Simon – ‘Let’s get him back up and let’s do it’,” Zempilas told Triple M radio.
“And I said, ‘Simon, my apologies, that was crazy’, and he said to me, ‘There’s so much going on, it’s fine, it’s fine’.
“And he stood next to me and we tried to get the PA down to be able to get Simon to say what he wanted to say in front of the crowd or whatever he might have been going to say.
“The PA I couldn’t reach, the cup had gone, and BT was down side of stage and said, ‘I’ll grab him’, and Simon was, ‘Hey, no problem at all’.”
Zempilas said the ordeal was “regrettable and it’s disappointing”.
“Because I don’t want that to be remembered as the moment from Melbourne’s great premiership victory,” he said.
He conceded it was a mistake on his behalf but that he was engulfed in the noise that filled Optus Stadium.
“Clearly the moment that counts is the premiership cup going up,” he said.
“I realised that Simon Goodwin hadn’t spoken. Now that was regrettable, and that was a mistake.
“In the end — I’ve played this over lots and lots of times, as you do — I will say that despite what people might say, I pride myself on this sort of work.
“I pride myself on getting these big moments right. I’ve done four Australian Open presentations, five Melbourne Cup presentations, they’re big moments and you want to get them and that didn’t go exactly to plan, clearly.
“So that’s regrettable, and it’s disappointing for Simon.”
Raw reactions inside Demons rooms
Gary Pert stands misty-eyed in the Demons’ change rooms and is forthright.
“This is the new Melbourne,” the club’s chief executive says as celebrations for a first flag in 57 years flow around him at Perth Stadium.
“The new Melbourne that believes it deserves to be in the finals, deserves to – if they’re playing at their best – to play in a grand final, deserves to win a premiership and it’s not something that happens to other clubs.”
Pert is in his third year at the Demons, having joined from Collingwood, where he is also a premiership winner as a chief executive.
Early in his time in red and blue there were a lot of people who wanted to talk to him about the past.
“They sort of wanted to let you know how tough it had been and what scar tissue they had, and tell you all the stories,” he says.
Not any more.
“Now what I’ve seen is everyone wants to talk about the future,” Pert says.
“They want to talk about the young list, they want to talk about how good Luke Jackson, Kozzy (Kysaiah) Pickett and Trent Rivers could be, how many finals series Jake Bowey is going to play in.
“When you get a club focused on the future and excited about it, there’s a culture shift.
“If we want grow into a big, powerful club that we were for the first 100 years of the competition, getting to 65, 70,000 members and big crowds at the MCG, we’ve got to be focused on this great player group and great coaches that we’ve got leading the program.”
Pert says the club’s history has sometimes created doubt but now it is all about optimism.
“I cannot tell you how many people around the club have said ‘I’m scared to think about the future or believe’,” he says
“I think that’s gone now.
“The new Melbourne is about what are the possibilities, we’ve shown what we’re capable of, why wouldn’t we win another one and another one when you’ve got eight players 21 and under, and a big part of the team had never played a final.
“It’s all very exciting.”
Few, if anyone, could have seen this coming.
Melbourne reached a preliminary final under coach Simon Goodwin in 2018 but slumped to second-bottom the next season.
Last year the club finished ninth.
Pert reckons there were encouraging signs over summer.
“I can honestly say I saw a shift day one of pre-season,” he says.
“The early games were different, led by the coaches and player group, and Darren Burgess and his (fitness) team have provided pretty much a fit list all season.”
What Melbourne had achieved hit Pert midway through the one-sided last quarter on Saturday night when the club was storming to its 74-point victory.
His thoughts were drawn to the Demons’ faithful in Victoria.
“It was very emotional,” he says
“I can just think of the past players, the supporters in their lounge rooms, the celebrations, people who have supported us for 30, 40, 50 years, and what that would mean to them.”
Former Demons are also in Perth Stadium’s change rooms.
In one corner is 2000 Brownlow Medallist Shane Woewodin in a club guernsey, talking to star ex-teammate turned assistant coach Adem Yze.
Best-and-fairest winner Bernie Vince is nearby in a Melbourne jumper and one-time co-captain Jack Trengove wanders through, smiling.
Club great Garry Lyon is in the middle of the room, looking elated and looking everywhere, taking it all in.
“Just seeing the faces around and the past players, it would’ve been this times a hundred if it was in the MCG,” says Yze, who is in his first season back at the club.
“We had an opportunity to try to break the hoodoo in 2000 and we couldn’t get it done.
“I’ve been away for a little while (at Hawthorn as an assistant) but understand how hard this club works and knowing the people behind the scenes, and the coterie groups that have always been there … through thick and thin.
“Walking in the door this year and seeing those familiar faces, I can just imagine how they’d be feeling.”
Yze has stayed in touch with lots of Melbourne people, including via WhatsApp groups.
He is not part of the one started by Rod Grinter that features more than 130 ex-Demons players, but is in another with guys he goes running with each week, such as David Neitz and Clint Bizzell.
An hour after the game, the group chat has about 180 unread messages.
“It was really funny in the prelim final my phone started lighting up at 5.30am Perth time with guys so nervous, knowing it’s a night game,” Yze says.
“Then feeling really confident, then 10 minutes later they’re saying ‘we’re gonna lose’ and I’m reading all this information just having a bit of a chuckle.
“I’ll end up scrolling through and it’s actually quite funny reading back.
“During the second quarter (on Saturday) I reckon a few of them would’ve been a little bit worried.
“I can’t wait to see those guys.”
Yze believes the bonds formed with his ex-teammates have been strengthened by the club’s tragedies over the past 20 years.
From Jim Stynes to Sean Wight, Troy Broadbridge to Colin Sylvia, Dean Bailey, Steven Clark and Robbie Flower, too many Demons have died young.
“I read an article today and you start to think back to how many different things happened to the footy club,” Yze says.
“I was really close to Colin Sylvia when he first started and Troy Broadbridge, travelling over to Thailand a year after.
“It’s nice to repay their support and the families that have been through those tragedies.
“Hopefully they get a bit of love from today.”
Yze has been teary since the final siren.
For many reasons.
“I’ve got red and blue running through my veins so there was a bit of emotion and nostalgia being my old footy club,” he says.
“I lost my mum during the year, so you think back to things like that.
“I feel emotional just looking at the players’ excitement and remembering how hard they worked in pre-season and the things they’ve gone through all year.
“Then you look at guys who’ve missed out: Adam Tomlinson, Jayden Hunt, Jake Melksham, and Nathan Jones is sitting at home.
“So it’s understanding there’s lots of different reasons why the emotions are coming out, but they’re good reasons.”
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