Harrison Jones looked down at his foot, and it was pointing back at him.
“I thought, ‘Oh that’s disgusting’,” Jones recalls. In shock at the time, he just remembers it being weird, but not immediately painful.
Harrison Jones clutches his injured leg on the boundary line.Credit: AFL Photos
It was just on three-quarter-time against North Melbourne in round eight when the versatile, tall wingman contested a ball at the boundary and landed with his foot at a right angle, which was, as it happens, the perfectly wrong angle for a rare dislocation. He tumbled over the line and found himself with his back against the fence.
“I didn’t think it would be as bad as it was but when I looked down, I thought, oh I shouldn’t swear, but I was, ‘Oh no, here we go, what’s happened here?’
“Initially, I thought I had just rolled my ankle – then I looked down I thought, ‘That is not a roll’. It was pointing the other way, it was facing towards me.”
The trainers and club doctor headed over to him, as alarmed and slightly grossed out fans leant over the fence to look. The cameras replayed the oddly angled foot like it was on a loop.
Doctors gave Jones pain relief with the “green whistle” out on the ground. Credit: AFL Photos
The doctor immediately tried to put the ankle back in, before there was any chance of pain medication, but it would not go. That bit hurt, but again the shock dulled the pain. They then gave him a “green whistle” for pain relief.
“The shock made it feel less sore, if that makes sense. It was more a really gross, yuck feeling,” Jones said.
“People weren’t really saying anything to me over the fence. I was trying to act cool in the sense that ‘No, I’m fine’. Then I saw some of the faces looking over the fence and I said to one of the trainers to put a towel over my foot because I was like, I don’t want people to see this. I don’t even want to see it, let alone some kids and people in the crowd.”
With the game continuing – Jones was outside the boundary and not interrupting play – and just a minute or so before the three-quarter-time siren, the stretcher cart had difficulty getting to him. Finally, the cart driver got to Jones … and he ran over the physio.
Harrison Jones leaves the field.Credit: Getty Images
“I don’t think he [the physio] was rapt with that. It was a bit of panic stations out there on what to do and what was going on,” he said.
By this time, the siren for three-quarter-time had sounded, but it still took some time to get Jones onto the cart. The club’s “Flame Runner” was also getting twitchy at being held up from their race against a fan around the boundary during the break because Jones and the cart were on the track.
The umpires went to the Essendon and North Melbourne huddles to tell them not to hurry as the break would be longer while they got Jones off the ground.
“I got in the rooms, and they attempted to put it back in again but my ankle was taped and the tape was restricting it. They took the tape off and at this point the foot was still facing the wrong way,” he said.
“I have got a gnarly video of them trying to put it back in and you can see, not the bone sticking out of the skin, but the imprint of the bone on the skin. It’s pretty gruesome.”
For the sake of good taste and to make sure readers keep their cornflakes down, he preferred not to share the video. Probably wise.
Once the tape was off the doctors quickly slotted the foot back in and, like flicking a light switch, any residual pain and discomfort almost disappeared.
Jones’ parents had arrived in the rooms. His dad had missed the incident as he had sneaked out to the loo to beat the three-quarter-time crowds. His mum played down her panic, worried that her distress would only upset her son. He was taken by ambulance to hospital for scans.
“The doctor at the hospital said, ‘You will definitely have a broken ankle or broken fibula because every one we have seen of these, it has been a snapped leg.’ I think I was still pretty high on the juice at this point, so I was like, ‘Oh well, I will be the only one’.
“We got the scans back and there was no break[in the ankle or lower leg]. I was sent home. Then I got an MRI the next morning and there was only a minor break on the outside of my foot and some ligament damage.”
Jones had suffered a subtalar dislocation (of the heel joint), which he was told accounts for only 1 per cent of dislocations.
He was put in a moon boot, then a brace. Incredibly, he was able to get back to running on the AlterG treadmill barely more than a fortnight later.
Having been confronted with the likelihood of double breaks to his lower leg and ankle, which would have ended his season, Jones has turned out to be something of a rarity at Essendon – an injured player who might return quickly. The Bombers are desperately undermanned for Thursday night’s clash with the Brisbane Lions at the ’Gabba.
“[Former Richmond player] Reece Conca did the same injury a few years back, but there are not really many guidelines on how it will heal so we are playing it a lot by ear,” Jones said. “But it will definitely be sooner rather than later, which is a great result.”
