Harry Froling was meant to die.

The victim of a horrific one-punch attack in Wollongong on January 21, 2023, the former NBL rookie of the year repeatedly dodged death before lifesaving brain surgery.

But that was just the start of his incredible battle.

Told he would never play basketball again, the reality of life without hoops left him so depressed that he removed himself from family and friends and spiralled into a dark hole where he questioned his self worth.

Just when the black dog loomed, a brutally honest spray from best mate and Boomers big man Will Magnay brought him back to reality.

Now Froling is eyeing a remarkable comeback to basketball with offers from multiple second tier clubs and an ultimate dream to return to the NBL.

“I was never meant to play basketball again. I’m not even meant to be alive,” he said.

“I’m not meant to be talking. It’s a miracle that I don’t have slurred speech.

“I’m proud I get a second chance at life.”

THE PUNCH

Froling’s day started well — he dropped 14 points as his Brisbane Bullets beat younger brother Sam’s Illawarra Hawks 103-86 in a family battle.

Victory beers at his brother’s house in Wollongong led to further celebrations in town.

Around 2.30am, his life changed forever when he was king hit and knocked unconscious outside the Heyday nightclub.

Nathan Mesinez — a former carpenter — struck him after seeing Froling talking to a group of young women, including his girlfriend.

Video of the incident played in court showed Mesinez initially sitting nearby on the ground before his girlfriend started pushing Froling.

He stepped between the two of them and punched Froling in the head, leaving him with a fractured skull and multiple haematomas.

The defence lawyers claimed the Brisbane centre was bothering the women and refused multiple requests to leave before Mesinez took a protective stance, reacting when the basketballer allegedly said: “What are you going to do, hit me?”

However, prosecutors argued he could easily have left with the women without punching Froling.

Mesinez was later handed a sentence of two years and seven months, with a non-parole period of one year and four months.

Almost two years on, Froling’s recollections of the incident remain hazy.

He can only recall the end of the game and going to his brother’s house for beers.

“And then after that it’s pretty much a four-day window of blank,” Froling said.

“My whole police statement was basically saying I don’t remember anything.

DODGING DEATH

Froling regained consciousness at the scene but was so unaware of his surroundings that the paramedic had to convince him to get in the ambulance.

He was later told someone at the scene had lied about the punch and said he simply fell over drunk.

“So the hospital originally treated me as an over-intoxicated human and they put me on an IV drip for four hours,” he recalls.

“They claim they asked if I wanted a brain scan, but apparently I didn’t consent to it.”

Froling didn’t stay in Wollongong hospital long. He pulled the IV drip out of his arm and checked himself out in the early hours of Sunday morning knowing he would miss the team bus to the airport if he didn’t leave.

“If you miss the team bus and flight, you have to book your own and you get a fine,” he said.

He arrived back at Brisbane’s team hotel in a bad state. His head was thumping, he couldn’t concentrate and all he wanted to do was sleep.

Roommate Rasmus Bach stopped him from going to bed and urged him to pack his bags as the bus was departing soon.

“Luckily I didn’t go to sleep otherwise they said I probably would have died,” he reflected with a shake of the head.

“I would have passed out, brain bleed and never woken up.”

Staff, including assistant coach Peter Crawford, kept asking him if he wanted to go to hospital, but he refused and retreated to the team bus where he sat in silence at the back.

“I guess the staff thought I was drunk or hungover,” he recalls.

“We got to the airport and I kept ignoring everyone and telling them to go away. I’ve got a headache, stop talking and my head hurts.”

In hindsight, he is lucky the cabin pressure on the flight didn’t kill him with his bleeding on the brain.

“I look back now and think it was dumb flying, but the lights were on and no one was home,” he said.

“I was later told that it normally isn’t a slow death – the pressure just cuts off the blood flow to your brain and you just switch off.”

THE EMERGENCY

By the time Froling landed in Brisbane, he struggled to walk one step at a time off the flight to greet his girlfriend.

Partner Emalee immediately took him to Brisbane hospital where after just one brain scan he was rushed to Brisbane Royal Hospital for lifesaving surgery.

Top neurosurgeon Dr Hamish Alexander called Harry’s mother Jenny and confirmed “he’ll die” if they don’t operate.

Sister Keely Froling was home in Sydney, watching sister Alicia play in the WNBL, when she got a shocking text message from Harry.

‘I’m pretty out of it going into surgery, bleed on my brain, can you call mum or dad and tell them’.

It’s a text Keely will never forget — even if the two can now make light of it.

“I told him, now we can joke about it, ‘if you ever text me that again, I’ll f***ing kill you myself’,” Keely said.

“I remember jumping off the couch in a panic, called dad, throwing things in a bag, just get there quick.

“Alicia’s in the middle of the game and we’re calling Sam (still in Wollongong) asking him to try to find out what happened because Harry didn’t know, he just knew he had a big headache and felt awful.

“Someone had told Sam he’d fallen … and I’m like, ‘you need to go to the police station, you need to get footage’.”

As Keely made a mad dash to Brisbane, all mum Jenny could do was sit and pray that her son would survive lifesaving brain surgery.

Four hours later, her tension shifted to relief following a successful procedure.

“They cut the big flap open – 10 cms of skull, drained that out and now I’ve got three plates in my head,” he said.

“Then he pinned me back up with all the staples.”

Keely arrived at the hospital with surgery still underway, but it was several days until they had answers.

“They said to us from the start, ‘we can’t guarantee anything’, he was experiencing weakness and you just don’t know with the brain, things can already be damaged or go wrong in the surgery,” she said.

“It was so hard because he was in surgery and we didn’t even know what happened.

“It took until Tuesday and the police officer called me and said ‘we have video and Harry was punched’.”

REALITY SETS IN

Froling woke up in hospital on Wednesday afternoon, asking: “what’s happening? “Why am I in hospital? What happened?”

By now mum was bedside and told him they had been talking for the past three days but he was suffering ‘black outs’. She also confirmed details of the punch and how he defied the odds to even be alive.

“It was pretty scary to hear all these stories third hand of what happened, but you don’t remember,” he said.

“I didn’t have any out of body experiences, but for those four days it just felt like I didn’t exist.”

Then came the devastating news that doctors recommended he should never play basketball again.

For Froling, who started playing hoops when he was five, the prospect of life without one of his loves was too much to take.

“I was in a pretty dark place for a good 12 to 14 months,” he said.

“It’s definitely a reality check when something you love gets taken away from you.”

Froling stayed in hospital for 10 days to check basic motor functioning like walking. Every four hours a doctor came and asked him his age, name and date of birth.

“It was doing my head in, but it was important,” he recalls.

“I was also seeing neuropsychologists and I had a speech therapist, but they ended up discharging me because there wasn’t much else they could do. I had to learn to live with it and I was on Panadeine to help with the headaches.

He felt comfort to finally leave the hospital, but his new day-to-day life was a struggle.

He experienced severe headaches, dizziness, slurred speech and even battled PTSD that left him nervous to go out at night.

“I struggled to stay awake all day,” he said.

“It was at least 12 months of issues and symptoms and I also experienced flashbacks to the moment of the punch.”

At his lowest point, Froling wasn’t sure if he wanted to live anymore.

He says now he was never going to act on his dark thoughts, but he was depressed and spent his days drinking and eating on the couch.

His weight ballooned to 158kg, he had no income, a six-month wait to process the disability pension and his self-esteem was at rock bottom.

“It’s definitely the darkest place I’ve ever been in,” he recalls.

“I wouldn’t say I was suicidal, but I definitely had thoughts where I thought it would be easier not to go through this and to not be here.

“I did have times when I thought, ‘f*** this, I don’t want to be here, this is s**t and I’d rather not be around’.

“I was depressed and I got to the point where I was damaging my relationships with people. I was having issues with mum and dad, relatives and friends. I was just a bad person to be around.

“I was the victim, but I also had that victim’s mentality. It just got to the point where I had to start to look in the mirror.”

A CONFRONTING CONVERSATION

The brutal hard truths arrived at a Movember charity ball in Brisbane with junior basketball mates Lachie Venus and Tasmania JackJumpers star Magnay.

Froling admits on the night he was being a “Debbie downer”.

He kept disappearing or complaining about his dire situation. Finally the pair intervened.

“The boys gave me a good kick in the arse and said, ‘hey, you’ve got to pull your head in’,” he said.

“We know what happened to you sucks, but you can’t keep going like this. No one had really said that to me like that.

“Obviously my family was there, but they supported me and let me go through things as I needed to.

“But hearing it from my best mates really kicked me into gear. I thought, ‘no more playing victim or feeling sorry for myself.

Magnay said it was very hard watching his mate struggle and that’s when he and Venus decided they had to tackle it head on.

“We were just doing our best to help him through those tough times but it came to a point where he’d stopped helping himself,” Magnay said.

“Full credit to him, he took it on the chin and owned up to his decision making and behaviour and has really turned a new page.”

THE COMEBACK

A year later, Froling looks and feels like a completely different person.

He has dropped to 130kg after spending time in Mackay spear fishing and training with their NBL1 side.

He is weighing his food and plans to be 120kg by February. Crucially, has been medically cleared to return to day-to-day life, including training and rehab.

“It’s changed my entire outlook on life,” he said.

“My body no longer hurts and I’m back training.

“I’m not far off. I could roll up and play NBL1 now if the season started today. I’m not NBL ready, but I do plan on being ready for NBL1 in May.

“It has been a long journey, but I’m proud of myself for fighting to reach this point.”