By Alejandro Krakowszky
The game was going great, Malo Morrisey received the ball and quickly scanned the field to find a teammate. It was always easy for him to find a pass. He was ambipedal, meaning both feet were just as good as each other.
As an opposition player ran towards him looking to win the ball, Malo quickly found a teammate and passed it.
SLAM!
He felt excruciating pain. After being pushed over, his opponent landed on him and briefly hyper-extended his knee sideways.
“It felt like my knee snapped, I couldn’t even lift it.”
Morrisey’s teammates lifted him up by his shoulders and he went over to the sideline. He started doing some movements with the physio but couldn’t return to the field.
“I was thinking, it’s probably fine and I just strained it. I can ice it, take some medication and it’ll be fine in a week.”
Morrisey went home and had a normal rest of the day, but later that evening the pain in his right knee got worse and he couldn’t stand anymore.
He went for a magnetic resonance imaging scan the next day. After conducting tests the radiologist diagnosed him with a lateral collateral ligament tear which would require rehab over the next three months.
At 17 years of age and peak physical fitness it wasn’t a scenario that ever crossed his mind. Being injured was a rarity to him, football was a part of his lifestyle and suddenly that had changed.
He endured rehab several times a week over the next three months, but whenever he would go to do a movement, his knee would clunk out of place. It was odd. Towards the end of his rehab, he took off from his right foot and it clunked underneath him.
“It just shifted, and I fell straight on my face, I was in so much pain.”
Something was wrong.
Wanting a second opinion on his injury, Morrisey decided to see head physio of A-League football club Western Sydney Wanderers, Elias Boukarim.
He sat down in the office and after brief introductions, started explaining his injury. Boukarim was quick to assess, and confidently told Malo he’d been misdiagnosed.
“There’s no way it could’ve been an LCL tear, the way your knee moved during the injury it couldn’t have torn that part of the knee, it would’ve been the other side or the meniscus,” Boukarim said.
He wrote a referral for Morrisey to get an MRI scan at Castlereagh Imaging at Westmead Hospital.
It was then confirmed that he had a meniscus tear. He felt a sense of relief pass through him. The news felt bittersweet as he had already gone through three months of rehab for an injury that he didn’t even have.
“I was just so angry at the fact that it’s their profession to diagnose these things,” he said.
“If I didn’t get a second opinion and a second MRI, I don’t even know what would have happened.
“It puts you at such a disadvantage, I was jumping and doing strength tests and it was putting my knee at risk of tearing again. So, I could’ve done a lot worse to my knee if I didn’t get that second opinion.”
But there was more news. Morrisey was told that he has a discoid meniscus, meaning it was thicker, and made the knee more prone to injury. He had been born with it, however wasn’t aware he had it. It’s extremely rare as only around 0.4 to 17 per cent of the world’s population have one. It made the recovery process significantly harder as it gave the surrounding muscle less space.
This time recovery was a lot different.
“I knew the solution was surgery, which I was actually happy about, there was a path that I could take to escape being injured.”
The rehabilitation program was going to take four to six months which meant he would likely miss the rest of the season.
His school football team Waverly College were going on tour to Japan in two weeks, but now knew he couldn’t play. Having already paid for the trip thinking he would be fit in time, Malo still travelled with the team and opted to have surgery when he returned to Australia.
On May 4, 2023, he completed surgery and was ready to start rehab again.
Over the next two months he realised the extremity of his injury. Simple things like walking to the shops or going out with mates became difficult as he was exerting more energy by trying to keep up with everyday activities.
Physical pain was only part of the problem, as emotionally he had to accept that he couldn’t play sport.
“I just felt very empty and like a big part of me just left me,” he said.
“If I had found out after my first injury that I would be injured and unable to play for the next year and a half, I’d be very emotional.”
After starting rehab, he felt a reoccurring pain in his knee called patella femoral pain, he continued to work with the physios and it got a little bit better. As he neared his return, he started running again to get fitness levels back up. However, he started to develop bone bruising on his right knee.
He went back to see Boukarim, who referred him to a gym called Athletes Authority. Over the next month they helped him get rid of the bone bruising while simultaneously rehabbing from his surgery.
On July 21 Morrisey participated in his first training session in over a year and a half. His teammates and coaches welcomed him back and made the transition as smooth as possible. But 40 minutes into the training session the group started a passing drill, and when stepping towards the ball his knee popped.
Five days later he was back getting the results for yet another MRI. The same person who did his first surgery greeted him: “You’ve trashed your meniscus.”
This was weird as after the first surgery he had told Malo to ice it and take anti-inflammatories if the pain got bad. Now he was telling him he had trashed it even after taking his advice.
There were also other issues to address. In the initial surgery there were two implants put into his knee to pin the meniscus back into place. However, over time the implants came undone and the meniscus re-tore. When Morrisey told the surgeon he still felt pain he was told there was nothing he could do about it.
The doctor felt like there was no point in doing any surgery, as he would be removing too much of the meniscus. He told Malo not to play football anymore and that he could try other sports such as snowboarding and surfing if he wanted to maintain his fitness.
But it wasn’t about maintaining fitness, he wanted to play football competitively.
“It felt like there was more importance placed on the knee not getting arthritis rather than his lifestyle and how it would impact Malo to not play football anymore,” Morrisey’s father said.
“He was just being protective of his own work,” said Morrisey.
He felt betrayed and lost confidence in specialists, by now injuries had started to consume him. It felt like from the start his injury hadn’t been treated properly.
However, not wanting to give up on football just yet, he decided to see ex-NRL player and NSW Blues doctor Nathan Gibbs. He explained that Morrisey could get a meniscectomy which would trim back the meniscus and allow him to play football again.
So, his dad spoke to his football club, Mount Druitt Town Rangers, and they were then referred to Dr Ruy da Assunção who told Morrisey about the risks of early onset arthritis. He said the decision to go ahead with the surgery was ultimately up to him.
He decided to have the meniscectomy. While conducting the surgery Assunção was shocked to discover two implants which were floating around and detached from the meniscus. Needing to act quickly he decided to fix the flapping meniscus and then do the meniscectomy after.
When the surgery was done he told Morrisey: “I’m glad you twisted my arm to do that surgery.”
If the floating implants weren’t discovered there could have been major issues in the future.
As he runs around the field, injury free., Morrisey is finally back in contact training. Breathing in the fresh air and passing the ball along the fine-cut grass. He’s missed football and will now return within the month. Knowing he must work hard, Malo is ready to dedicate the time and prove to himself that he can play as well as he did before.
Featured image: An X-ray of Malo Morrisey’s knees and the footballer in action. Photos: Malo Morrisey
