Jake Stringer strongerBy Callum Twomey
Mon 22 Oct, 2012
Jake Stringer is expected to defy his broken leg to be taken early in the NAB AFL Draft JAKE Stringer keeps the scans of his broken leg in a special spot in his bedroom cupboard. He doesn't look at them much, but knows where to go if he needs a quick reminder of his last two years, where documentation of his progress and struggle is jammed inside 17 by 14 inch envelopes.
Stringer has so many x-rays, it takes a while to find what he calls the "most gruesome" one, taken shortly after the compound fracture of his left leg in the opening round of the TAC Cup in 2011.
Others tell the story of his path since then, some showing the bones stuck together with pins and a rod. There are more recent ones, too, since the metal was removed and the bone had healed itself.
For Donna Stringer, Jake's mum, it feels like a "distant memory". For Jake, however, getting almost daily questions and enquiries about the injury keeps it fresh. When Stringer had his medical evaluation at this month's NAB AFL Draft Combine, they all came at once.
"There wasn't too many people sitting down when I went up for my go, that's for sure," Stringer told AFL.com.au.
"I think just about every person got up to have a look and a touch and a feel. It was a bit weird, you've got 18 club doctors standing around you poking, feeling, asking questions, getting you to do movements. It's confronting."
Stringer understands why it's happening. Before the injury, which happened while playing for the Bendigo Pioneers, Stringer was considered a likely part of last year's Greater Western Sydney mini-draft. The break of his tibia and fibula ended any chance of that.
Now only a few weeks out from the NAB AFL Draft, clubs are still unsure what to make of him. On talent, Stringer is in the best handful of players available this year. He's strong and tough, can do a lot of brilliant things and play nearly every position on the ground.
But they are countering his potential with his risk, wondering whether to pick him with a top-end selection or hope he slides until a little bit later. "At the moment, he's a mystery," says Leon Harris, Vic Country talent manager.
It all started when Stringer got caught awkwardly in a tackle, and felt his leg collapse and crack as he went to kick the ball. The bones ripped through the front of his left shin, leaving his foot and ankle to wobble.
At first glance he wasn't sure what had happened. Then the pain hit.
"It literally felt like someone had a saw and was just hacking away at my leg," he says.
He clawed at the grass as medicos took him off the ground in agony, and didn't look at his leg during the next 90 minutes or so while he waited for an ambulance to arrive.
When he got back to his home in Bendigo after the surgery, the injury's impact started to make a little more sense. He found he needed help doing all the things he could normally do himself: get something to eat and drink, shower, go to the toilet. Stairs at the front door, and again inside, wasn't ideal, though his long-time girlfriend Abbey Gilmore was always on hand.
Stringer's rehabilitation was built on smaller goals, with bigger ones in mind. He had to learn to run again, then re-teach himself how to kick on his left foot.
He wanted to be back up and going by December for the AIS-AFL Academy's camp in Canberra and then to be fine to train with the Western Bulldogs for a week in January. After that, about 12 months following the original break, Stringer had pencilled in a return to footy for the academy against the Box Hill Hawks at the MCG late in March.
At times he pushed too hard. His competitiveness had to be managed.
"Before Christmas last year, when Jake shouldn't have been doing much running, there were cones set up and guys were doing sprint testing over 10 or 15 metres," says David Newett, the Pioneers coach. "And he just blew them all away. He was limping really badly and had hardly trained, but as soon as the competition arose, Jake just wanted to be involved."
It was a difficult balance. His dad, John, watched Jake make his own decisions in his rehabilitation and find it frustrating when things didn't quite work. John runs a dairy distribution company, where Jake helps deliver milk to clients.
Jake's designated truck sits in the driveway at home ready to go, although John has sheltered Jake from some of the more strenuous work during his recovery.
"You have to be pretty meticulous about it: making sure the muscles come back, making sure you're not overtraining, making sure you tick all the boxes," John says.
"At his age - he's not a professional sportsman at this stage - he had to take it on board himself. To make those decisions as a young boy is tough."
Stringer met each of his deadlines. After the week at the Bulldogs - who loved him, like Geelong had the year before - Stringer needed surgery at the start of this February to remove the rod and screws.
It meant two weeks off his feet. Another five weeks after that he played for the AIS, winning a bet with former Pioneers, and current Vic Country, coach Mark Ellis that he would play in that game (Stringer got a couple of brand new footballs from Ellis for playing. He risked mowing Ellis' lawn for the season if he didn't).
He returned from the Europe tour and in Bendigo's first game of the season booted nine goals. He played like he did pre-injury: too strong, too smart and too quick for opponents, and having the game on his terms.
"I wanted to make sure that everyone knew I was coming back and I meant business," he says.
"I wasn't coming back to fill up the numbers, I wanted to show it hadn't all gone away."
But the performance led to expectations, some he couldn't meet.
Stringer's leg continued to give him problems. Every time it got a knock it hurt, and he was apprehensive. For a natural sportsperson, nothing was simple. It hadn't been that way throughout his life.
"I think sometimes you're born with an ability, and it doesn't matter, you could be a music prodigy or whatever it is," John says. "For some people, it's just in you. It's in Jake."
Basketball was the first sport to come easily to Stringer. John remembers Jake, "a little ball of muscle", shooting at the 10ft hoop before he was two years old. He played his first A-Grade basketball game in Maryborough, near Bendigo, when he was six. He even played against John, and older brother Travis, in a basketball game once, filling in for another team. He shot nine three-pointers that day.
There were cricket games in the backyard with Travis and other brother Brad, while a young Jed Adcock used to live nearby and join in. Brad plays footy at Eaglehawk, Jake's local club, while Travis is an accountant living in Bermuda.
Football came later, where he could put his aggression and power to better use. There are still signs of basketball instincts in his footy, in his spring when he leaps for marks, and his quick decisions in tight spaces.
But after the early form, it took a while this year to see all of that again. It wasn't there at the NAB AFL Under-18 Championships, where Stringer battled for Vic Country. Some mismanagement didn't help his cause, either, despite best intentions.
"We backed off his running with about three weeks to go before the championships, and dropped off his workload so we could nurse him through," says Harris. "But in hindsight we didn't work him enough. He just needed more work. He was struggling."
After a quiet start to the championships, Stringer got a lift to Melbourne with Ellis ahead of the third-round meeting with Western Australia, in Perth. Ellis lives only five or six doors down from the Stringer family, at the other end of their hilly road, and has known him since he was 12. Ellis' advice carried weight. He broke his leg twice during his own career.
On the drive, he suggested Stringer try wearing a shin guard to protect the bone.
"I thought he was joking," Stringer says. "I thought there was no way known I was going to wear one, I'm not a ruckman."
But after another poor showing against Western Australia, where he got hit on the leg, Ellis urged Stringer to give it a go. A week or so later he visited the local SportsPower store, bought a shin guard and tucked it under his sock against the Sandringham Dragons in the TAC Cup. He had 25 disposals.
"I felt like I had everything back again," he says. "Just having this little guard there covered it, so if it got hit it didn't hurt, I could keep going. I wasn't worrying about it and that was when I started to play better."
He played three more games for the Pioneers after that, and then three for Bendigo Gold in the VFL. Despite the occasional limp during games, Stringer impressed.
He gathered 25 touches against Box Hill, showing he could mix it with the bigger types (he is 191cm and 94kg). It also showed that playing as a strong and dynamic midfielder - where most think he'll end up - wasn't beyond him.
The limp has caused some consternation for clubs, although he didn't think he was the smoothest runner before the injury.
"They've been getting into me about my gait, but when you haven't been running too flash for 17 years and then you break your leg and you come back and they expect you to run perfectly ... I don't know," he says.
Stringer doesn't feel like he's achieved anything by getting back from the injury and being a likely first-round pick. Most around him have seen him change through the process, though. His dad thinks he's become more resilient, Newett recognises a level of empathy that's come out more, and although Harris still sees the strut and cheeky smile in Stringer, he knows there has been times he has questioned himself. Not anymore.
"It's an interesting one because so many people now are doubting me because of my leg," Stringer says.
"But for me I know come round one next year I'll be ready. And there'll be nothing that will stop me from doing that. My leg's fine, everything's fine. If I don't play round one, I'd be pretty disappointed."
Stringer knows the last two years will stay with him - the scar on his shin is still clear - but he doesn't want it to define him.
"I've tried to look at as a big story. And this injury was just a part of the story, not the whole thing," Stringer says.
http://www.afl.com.au/tabid/208/default.aspx?newsid=150045
