Will Power By Brisbane Times Sports Editor, Phil Lutton Spending hours in solitude can do funny things to a man. Will Genia didn’t start talking to a volleyball, like Tom Hanks in Cast Away, but a busted knee gave him ample time for reflection, he tells Phil Lutton. The one word you always hear when speaking to athletes on the way back from long-term injuries is “loneliness”. It’s a universal emotion, often amplified in team sports when the bond of the players is one of the premiere attractions of playing the game. As such, staring at the wall of a gym and spinning the wheel of an exercise bike while everyone else is training or relaxing is rarely an easy pill to digest. “It gets very lonely and you’ve just got to find what motivates you, keep that at the front of your mind. Early on especially, it doesn’t really feel like you are making any progress,” Genia says. Nobody of stable mind would ever wish to be on the surgeon’s table having their knee sewn back together. But for Genia, there was a glass half full perspective to a serious injury. Not only did it allow him to take a step back from rugby, it enabled him to reconsider what was important to him as a part of the Reds and as a young man. To read more grab a copy of the Match Day Program at the game.
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