A $3000 tinny kept Connor Tracey sane, before bone marrow from a deceased donor kept his knee together and his NRL career alive.
These days he and injured winger Sione “the Tongan fisherman” Katoa push each other to new depths free diving for lobster and abalone – a remarkable combination considering Katoa “could barely swim when he first started recovery sessions with Cronulla”.
Tracey is set for a late shift to left centre on Saturday night due to Siosifa Talakai’s shoulder injury as he continues to put the literal graft and grind of his stint at South Sydney, when a third knee reconstruction threatened his career, behind him.
“Souths was a tough period in some ways; my third and toughest ACL [reconstruction] was there,” Tracey said. “But I ended up debuting with them after getting through that, too. I’ll always be grateful for how they looked after me.
“The first two surgeries [on knee injuries suffered in the under-20s] didn’t get the right graft in so the third one was a full patella [reconstruction] to fix it once and for all. That rehab was the longest and the hardest.
Connor Tracey during his NRL debut for South Sydney in 2019.Credit:NRL Photos
“Because the holes from the first two recos were too big, I had to get a donor’s transplant of bone marrow in to fill them up, then wait three months for them to be drilled into and an extra reconstruction from that. It was a 15-month recovery.
“You’re effectively puttying up a hole, waiting for it to fuse and then drilling into that. That was my fishing period, just sitting in a boat because I couldn’t do much else.”
Tracey’s first tinny was bought for “about three grand” the day after his second ACL rupture. For all its benefits, the boat had an unfortunate habit of taking on water.
“I was actually with [former Souths teammate, now Bulldog] Corey Allan last year and he’s got a better boat than me,” Tracey said with a laugh.
“We were out off Cronulla, 15 kilometres out [from shore] and we started taking in water. The bilge pump breaks, so we’re sitting there bailing water out with a bucket 15 kilometres out from shore thinking we’re going to sink.
“We’ve got enough water out, we’ve come flying in, stopping to bail water out along the way in this four-metre-long tinny. It was very, very dicey.
“We were close to sending up a flare and calling it in on the radio. I was pretty calm; Corey was stressing, and probably fair enough – middle of nowhere, no other boats around with water coming in. Short fishing trip that one.”
Mayday calls aside, salt water offers respite for Tracey and plenty in the Sharks ranks, with coach Craig Fitzgibbon rated the best surfer at a club full of them.
Tracey could well claim best chef honours for his work with kingfish and crayfish – though a recent crack at lobster pizza “looked better than it tasted”.
“I landed a kingfish when I was 14. I was hooked from there, and I’ve picked up the diving since with Sione,” he said. “All my hobbies are along those lines; you get away from everything.
“Diving especially: you’re underwater, it’s dead quiet and peaceful. If the water’s clear, it’s the best way to get away from footy and everything else.”
The screws and someone else’s bone marrow remain in Tracey’s knee, of course, a reminder of when footy was almost taken away from him for good.
“It’s made me who I am, that whole injury period,” he said. “I wouldn’t take it back, it’s added a lot of resilience, and after those injuries, the game of footy’s not really that hard is it?”
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