A sleepless night, a breakfast that wouldn’t stay done and full-body jitters.
That’s the inside story behind Gold Coast’s Wil Powell emotional return to football, three-quarters of a year after the gruesome leg injury that rocked the sport.
He’s played six games since returning in his beloved club’s famous win over Geelong, is in career-best form and now returns to his home State for the first time since the opening round of last season.
“It’s probably the most nervous I’ve ever been for a football game. All the emotions of the lead-up to gameday and the sleep before — I could hardly sleep with all the emotions still running through my brain and my body — I was real jittery and so excited,” he told The West Australian.
“I ended up having breakkie, couldn’t get down lunch, vomited up breakkie.
“Getting to the ground and running out there it was just a big breath of fresh air, all the hard work that I did.
“I couldn’t have got their without my girlfriend, the physios, my family and the coach’s support.
“It was the best feeling ever… I wouldn’t change it for the world.
“I found I settled in pretty quickly, I’d had a good bloke of training and had played half a VFL game. In the VFL game I felt like a bit of a headless chook, just the game-plan and overall structure and it was just so much faster than training.
“In the AFL game I did not think or bat an eyelid to my ankle or my hamstring at all, I was just focused on the task at hand which was beating Geelong and that’s what we were able to do.”
On June 19 last year Powell was left lying in agony on the Metricon Stadium turf, screaming in agony and staring at ankle broken so badly it was at a 45 degree angle to his leg.
He wouldn’t play footy again for nine months.
But that day might have come even sooner, if not for the unluckiest of soft tissue injuries, a hamstring strain in the very last passage of the week’s final training session a sour end to a rehabilitation block just weeks away from completion.
“It was just before my first match since my ankle. The whistle had gone and what we usually do is if we’re already in play we finish off the drill,” Powell said.
“I got the ball, took off and fell over — got sniped. It was awful, all the emotions hit me at once, I couldn’t really control them out on the ground.
“All the hard work you have to put in and another two or three months of hard yards in rehab would be devastating after doing six months of it.”
At 3-5 and 14th on the ladder, the Suns’ season hangs in the balance. It’s a predicament they know well. But Powell is confident things are different now.
There’s depth and pressure for spots that hasn’t been there before.
Powell’s close friend and fellow West Australian Jeremy Sharp is one still on the outer. Former Docker Connor Blakely is also still playing reserves, as are Alex Sexton, Jy Farrar and Charlie Constable among a group of players with AFL experience.
“The depth is shown in the VFL performances this year, they haven’t lost a game and as a club that’s what we’re striving for, the continuity,” he said.
“It’s good having that there and it pushes us in the ones, knowing that the boys in the VFL could come in and do their job straight away.”
The Claremont product could have upwards of 25 friends and family members at Optus Stadium on Friday night as he plays in his home State for the first time in more than a year and is a trip home that comes after a rare week in the news for the quiet and unassuming youngster.
It’s a ground they won at last time out and could present a chance to spring-board their season.
“Coming back to WA is always nice, it’s a long flight so I don’t get over there often,” Powell said.
“I’ve asked for 20 tickets, so at least 20 friends and family and then the poor ones that miss out — so it might be 25 or 30.”