It says plenty about Zach Reid’s injury-ravaged AFL journey that he is almost as proud of a recent full-body scan as his seven-game unscathed run to start this season.
Essendon’s 204-centimetre defender, one of the club’s three heavily scrutinised top-10 picks from 2020, is one of the year’s heart-warming stories after repeated setbacks in his first four seasons restricted him to only nine matches.
Zach Reid has played all seven of Essendon’s games this year after a horror injury run in his first four seasons.Credit: Joe Armao
Reid’s had two lower back stress fractures, three left hamstring injuries, a ruptured pectoral muscle, glandular fever, and bone stress in his right foot.
The path back to this point – where he is again one of the AFL’s most promising key defenders – was as much about surviving the torturous mental lows that sent him “crazy” as rebuilding himself physically.
Reid, in his own words, experienced the full gamut of emotions: anger, frustration, jealousy, self-pity, self-doubt and even losing hope about his fledgling AFL career.
“The first 48 hours after injury is pretty frustrating. You start that doubtful thinking about whether your body’s, one, ready to play now or ready to play ever,” Reid told The Age.
“I didn’t handle injury well in my first few years – and injuries are one thing, but the recurrence of injuries is a kick in the guts. It feels like you’ve wasted time and not got the reward for the hard work you put in.”
Reid joined teammate Jordan Ridley, who has also had soft-tissue problems, on a week-long fact-finding mission at the Aspetar Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Hospital in Qatar in the off-season.
Testing revealed that the 23-year-old’s troublesome left hamstring was smaller and weaker than his right. Dr Enda King gave Reid a series of exercises and sent him back to Melbourne. After considerable hard work, the reward Reid often felt he missed out on was suddenly a reality.
Zach Reid competes with Collingwood’s Dan Houston in his first Anzac Day game last month.Credit: AFL Photos
“I had a full-body scan recently at Olympic Park that compares muscle mass, and now I’m equal, left and right, and I haven’t had any hammy issues since,” he said.
Where the trouble started
Essendon selected Reid, then barely 19 years old, to play his first AFL game in round five of his debut season against a Brisbane Lions team that had signed ex-Bombers star Joe Daniher.
He felt sick that week, but thought it was a common cold, or the flu at worst. Reid was wrong, and his health deteriorated rapidly in the days after playing.
“I was like, ‘I’m not giving up this opportunity to play my first game’, so I went up there pretty sick already, and then I played, and I think that just tipped me over the edge,” Reid said.
“The exhaustion of playing your first AFL game is hard enough as it is, but when you’ve got glandular fever – which I didn’t know at the time – [it is even harder]. After that, I went downhill. The next week was Anzac Day. It was a dream to play Anzac Day, and I was going to get my opportunity in my first year. I’ve missed every Anzac Day until this year.”
Reid, whose draft season was wiped out by the COVID-19 pandemic, was bedridden for weeks, but eventually made it back on the training track. Only weeks in, scans revealed a stress fracture in his lower back.
“I think being in bed for ages, and then coming back to an AFL program, on top of missing so much footy during COVID, didn’t help a growing body,” he said. That ended Reid’s season after just one senior match.
Bone stress in the sesamoid bone in his right foot in the ensuing pre-season was just a minor nuisance in comparison. Reid was otherwise injury free in 2022, adding seven senior games and 12 in the VFL. But by December that year, his back stress fractures returned.
“That was really flattening,” he said.
“People were trying to help, and saying, ‘Oh, you’ve got 10 years ahead of you; don’t worry about it’ – but I think the average [AFL] career length is four years. I was like, ‘You don’t have a crystal ball, so you can’t really say that’.
“My mindset back then was, ‘Poor me; why is this happening to me?’. You think when you’re a top-10 pick, you’re going to come in, and it’s going to go smoothly, but then you get hit in the face with some adversity.”
Learning to better handle his setbacks, which Reid said came with maturity and perspective – “It could be a lot worse. I could be homeless” – proved crucial. His three hamstring injuries, all on his left leg, and a ruptured left pectoral muscle were still to come.
Zach Reid’s wretched injury history
2021: Reid diagnosed with glandular fever after making his AFL debut in round five against Brisbane Lions. Three months later, after being bedridden then rebuilding his fitness, scans reveal he has a stress fracture in his lower back.
2022: Bone stress is detected in the sesamoid bone of his right foot in pre-season. He wears orthotics to remedy the issue, and plays most of the season between the AFL and VFL.
2023: Another back stress fracture interrupts his pre-season and delays his season start. Shortly after returning in the VFL, Reid suffers a T-junction hamstring injury in his left leg that sidelines him for six weeks. In testing ahead of his planned VFL return, the injury flares up, prompting season-ending surgery.
2024: Suffers a left hamstring strain – in a different area to the previous two – in Essendon’s round one win over Hawthorn. It costs him seven games, then in the fourth match of his comeback in the VFL, an opponent crashes into him, rupturing his left pectoral muscle, leading to another operation.
The latter was a freak injury in a VFL match, where Reid went to tackle a Box Hill opponent who “steamrolled” through his arm and ruptured the injury-cursed Bomber’s pec. Season-ending surgery followed.
Playing on Anzac Day was not Reid’s only highlight this season. He also had the chance to share the field with, and play directly on, his brother, West Coast forward-ruck Archer.
“I was the perfect match-up for him,” Reid said.
“We both didn’t really have any impact, so it was funny, but it was good that it was close. It made it entertaining for our parents.”
The Reid brothers, Zach and Archer, played against each other in round six.Credit: AFL Photos
Reid insists the only change now he is playing regularly is the extra attention from media and fans, some of whom thank him for being a “bargain buy” in fantasy football.
“I’m outperforming my price, so that’s the main thing fans are grateful for,” he said, smiling.
“I was out for dinner with my mate the other day, and he said he traded me. He took that money and bought Nick Daicos.”
It is probably easier given he’s now injury free, but Reid says he has no regrets.
“I don’t think I would change it,” he said. “I would have loved to play more games, but I think I would have missed out on the character-building of [that adversity] if it didn’t happen.”
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