Since joining the Newcastle Knights this season, Jack Stockwell has worked hard to establish himself one of the team’s most consistent and top performing forwards.
He’s been voted Players' Player twice and has racked up some impressive stats in both attack and defence.
So it was understandably a massive blow when the 23-year-old learned he would miss the rest of the season due to a bicep injury.
“It was a complete rupture of my bicep and the tendon pretty much snapped off my bone,” Stockwell explained of the injury suffered in the first half of the Knights’ match against the Canberra Raiders at Hunter Stadium.
“I knew I had done something bad straight away, but I had to defend the rest of the set.
“I kind of just was hoping no one would run at me, which they didn’t, thank God.
“As soon as I went off it was pretty sore and I knew something bad had happened, so I just had to get scans to confirm it."
Stockwell then underwent major surgery to reattach his bicep.
“They drilled straight down through my bone and I think my bicep had restracted about nine centimeters,” he said.
“They pulled the bicep back down and just tied it to graft back on."
He’s recovered well from surgery and is in good spirits as he casts his focus forward to his recovery plan.
“I have a half cast on at the moment, this will come off at the end of next week,” he said.
“I’m in a brace for four weeks after that.
“Hopefully I’ll be back at training once I get that brace on and can start doing some single arm, leg stuff and a bit of cardio so my fitness doesn’t go completely out the window.
“I will progress from that over the next couple of months.”
Stockwell was back at Knights HQ for the first time on Thursday since his operation which was a welcome chance to catch up with his teammates.
“It was good seeing the boys and they were pretty sympathetic. They all said how much they were feeling for me,” he said.
While it would be easy to dwell on the disappointment of the setback, Stockwell is determined to remain upbeat and return to the field stronger than ever next year.
“You can’t really dwell on what’s happened too much, you just have to move on from here,” he said.
“The positives are what I was doing through the start of the year.
“It’s just about getting myself right and getting the rehab right and coming back next year to continue and improve on that form.
“Hopefully when I come back to training I’ll be doing a bit and will be around the boys a lot more and keep contributing.
“I will be there still supporting the boys 100 per cent.”
