The offseason injury Matthew Richardson kept secret from Richmond

OFF-field injuries can strike at any time. Matthew Richardson remembers some of the worst — and the one he kept secret from Richmond his entire career.

06/04/2003. Matthew Richardson. Western Bulldogs v Richmond. Telstra Dome. Digital Image.

OFF-FIELD injuries are a footy club’s worst nightmare.

In a game filled with collisions that tests its players physically as much as any in the world, it’s hard enough keeping players from getting hurt during games — let alone away from the club.

From Nigel Smart’s infamous walk across hot coals on an Adelaide Crows camp to the broken leg former Carlton player Rohan Welsh suffered during a late night visit to San Francisco’s Golden Gate bridge on an end-of-season trip, players have been damaging themselves in many strange ways.

In my days at Richmond there were already strict rules about what you could and couldn’t do away from the club. Michael Gale was told not to ride his motorbike to training, you could forget about trips to the snow and even playing cricket in the summer was off limits.

The West Coast Eagles coaching staff would have been having sweating bullets when Nic Naitanui slam dunked that basketball a couple of years back and Alex Rance nearly cost Richmond a finals spot after falling off his bike last year.

This season we’ve already seen a few players go down — none more unfortunate than Richmond’s David Astbury, who was stung by a stingray during a recovery session at Port Melbourne beach.

But it hasn’t just been the players copping it. Brad Scott missed games at the Kangaroos after having back surgery, Nathan Buckley tore a hamstring playing touch footy (seriously Bucks, you were one of the most competitive players I’ve ever seen but it’s time to stop thinking you can compete with the younger boys) and this week James Hird suffered a severe concussion after crashing his bicycle.

And these are only the stories we’ve heard about. There’d plenty more that have been kept secret by the clubs — and perhaps even a few the clubs don’t know about.

Nigel Smart and his burnt feet after walking over hot coals in 1992.

James Hird has promised to leave his bike in the garage for the timebeing.

In his soon to be released book Brisbane champion Jonathan Brown talks about busting his ribs after falling off a balcony at a mate’s place before the 2003 season. He was taken to hospital but didn’t want a big deal made about it so he did a runner and battled through preseason without revealing the injury.

It just so happens that same preseason I did something very similar. My sister was engaged in January that year and she had a party down at the Docklands. It was back before the area was fully developed so when we left the party our chances of getting a taxi were pretty slim.

So when I spotted one driving past I broke into a full sprint and once I could see I had the driver’s attention I turned around and started waving to the group to hurry and catch up. Because I was moving backwards I didn’t see the kerb coming and tripped and fell. I put my arm out to brace myself and felt the most terrible pain shoot through my wrist.

I tried to shake it off but it was pretty sore so I tried to do the right thing at the next bar we visited by icing it with a cool beverage. I kept telling myself it wasn’t too bad but when I woke up the next day it was clear I’d done something.

I didn’t want to let anyone down at the footy club — or admit what had happened as I was embarrassed and had the guilts — so I decided not to tell anyone. There were still a few weeks of training where we’d mainly be doing running, so I got through those and then once we started having a few scratch matches I pretended I’d hurt it in a contest and got it looked at properly.

Scans revealed I’d damaged ligaments in my wrist. I had to keep my wrist strapped all through that season and get the occasional jab. It did bother me all year and despite playing 19 games I had one of my worst seasons and required surgery on the wrist at the end of the year. I blame my sister for getting engaged.

He kept it strapped throughout a frustrating season for the Tigers.

Matthew Richardson with his left wrist heavily strapped in March, 2003.

Originally published as The offseason injury Matthew Richardson kept secret from Richmond