The carrier Lydia Williams and the captain of the AFL Bob Murphy reveal how they exceeded the injuries to reach new heights

We often think of professional athletes as unwavering: after all, they are continuously pushing the limits of what a body can do.

But in an industry obsessed with strength and speed, an injury can endanger the entire career of an athlete, not to mention his mental health.

Lydia Williams football star and AFL Bob Murphy veteran joined The Mining Field of ABC Radio National Discussing how injuries forced them to adopt vulnerability and put their faith in their teammates.

Trip to the top

The archera Lydia Williams spent the first years of her career feeling invincible.

Explore by a coach in Canberra at age 15, he made his debut in national women’s football at age 17 and settled as a star goalkeeper United United and Matildas.

Then, in 2012, Williams, 24, was delighted to spend a season in Sweden playing for a local club. But she played only three games before breaking her anterior cross ligament (ACL) and was sent home for reconstructive surgery.

It was a hard blow, delivered just when he felt he was coming out in the sports world.

“I was at the top of my game in Australia and wanted to go abroad to show myself and improve even more. And here (here) I faced a really important injury,” says Williams.

The recovery was long and exhausting, with past months under careful supervision of physiotherapists. He feared that his physicality would change, since surgery required to remove tendons from his hamstrings to maintain his injured knee.

“(I thought), ‘How is this possible that I have to learn everything again? My technique will change when they rebuild that ligament?'” She says.

When he returned to the game, he found that the movements he had practiced in rehabilitation were different in the field. He no longer trusted his body, and his injury pursued her.

“I was playing in that field every day, so it was suddenly like a revised trauma,” he recalls.

“(To) trust that movement, where you are not thinking about it, that was the biggest barrier.”

Slowly, she rebuilt her strength and trust. But only two years after its knee reconstruction, it was injured again.

This time, Williams was playing for the Western New York Flash in the National Women’s Soccer League in the United States when he broke his ACL and the meniscus in the same knee.

She remembers calling her team, her coach and her doctor from the side, crying. But an experienced teammate, “one of the most prolific players in the world,” he approached her with some tips.

“(She said), ‘Lydia, you cry tonight, go to have a drink, do what you want. Tomorrow, when you wake up, you are working. You will return and you are going to do the World Cup,” Williams recalls.

That goal was carried out through the recovery of its second knee reconstruction with a renewed sense of purpose and impulse.

“Those heartbreaking emotions of feeling depressed, disappointed and angry became action, words, a plan, progress,” she says.

I had to fully trust the medical staff that surrounded her.

“All my life has been about control and what I need to do to do. But I have also learned throughout this that sometimes you just have to trust other people,” she says.

“It is a real struggle, give your body (more) to another person.”

Not only did he attend the World Cup in Canada in 2015. He also made a safe that defined the race that helped the Matildas win their first World Cup Cupout match.

“It was an incredible feat of all. It wasn’t just a person, they all had a common goal, everyone worked extremely hard,” she says.

“And for me, it was a finger (middle) for all the injured knees I have had, just to be like, I can do it … I am better than before it injured me ‘”.

A moment that changes life

For Bob Murphy, an injury led to one of the deepest and most moving moments of his professional life.

It was 2016 and the Western Bulldogs pattern had been playing for 17 years. Like the oldest player, and the captain since 2015, he felt a sense of responsibility for the sick club.

“We were as bad as a football club can go,” he says.

“There was a deep feeling of shame that I felt as the old man of the football team at that time.”

His last captain, star player Ryan Griffen, had moved away; They had two disastrous seasons; And the club faced financial conflicts. As Murphy says, “the bruises were fresh.”

Then the season began. But after only three rounds, a broken ACL ended Murphy’s race prematurely.

“I was almost certain that it was all, that was me,” he recalls.

“I was 34 years old at that time, so in the time borrowed anyway.”

With several players more suffering injuries, another losing season seemed likely.

But the Bulldogs sailed in one game after another until finally, won the grand final of 2016 and finished the 62 -year -old drought from the club.

Murphy watched from the stands, ecstatic.

“There was a feeling and warmth and a noise in a stadium that I had never felt before or since then. It was quite extraordinary,” he says.

Then, coach Luke Beveridge called Murphy to the podium and, when the crowd roar, took the medal that had just been awarded and placed her around Murphy’s neck.

“This is yours, friend. You deserve it more than anyone,” he said.

Murphy describes the complicated wave of emotions that beat him.

“(I felt) the pride and euphoria and the joy of being part of the club, knowing (its) story intimately, feeling it in my marrow,” he says.

“But also the pain and anguish of not being in football boots: euphoria had warts, this is how I would describe it.

“Both things crashed with each other, and it was almost too much to drive. I felt weak on my legs.”

It was also “a very personal thing in front of the masses,” he says.

“Luke was telling me that I was fine … that was between him and me.”

That feeling of connection exceeded its sense of victory.

“I think many people lose the point. They ask for the medal (how) ‘Do you feel that you are a prime minister?'” He says.

Despite that, as the first place disappeared, Murphy began to doubt himself. He returned to play the 2017 season as Captain of the Bulldogs, but when the pre -season training began, he found himself “unchanged with an inferiority complex.”

“(I thought), ‘I’m not a prime minister player, how do you deal with these guys?” He says.

He also felt intense jealousy of his teammates who had played in that historical game.

“I think there is a notion for athletes and soccer players and for me that, if that happened, everything would be complete. Life would reach this place in Nirvana, where there are no stolen fingers and never run out of gas,” he says.

“I cornered (a teammate) at some point after the prime minister and said: ‘Just tell me, be right with me, how is the sensation?’

“And he said: ‘Look, it was an incredible day. There were some wonderful moments in later weeks, and then life continued.'”

Murphy played his last game, against the Hawthorn Hawks, at the end of the 2017 season. At the end of the game, Murphy and two other retired players were transported from the stadium through an honor guard.

Since then, he has worked in media and leadership roles with the Bulldogs and other clubs.

Now, “With time and age,” Murphy looks back in his career, and the grand final he could not play, with love.

“I simply see myself as one of the leaders, one of the elders at that time. He is not a prime minister player, but I was there and I helped. That’s enough.”

And when he has doubts, he returns to the field where that great final took place.

“Just to experience the smell of the grass in the MCG on an autumn night, it is not much better than that. And I was lucky to do so for so long.”