Some moments in sport stay with you. I remember watching a Brisbane Broncos game in a friend’s shed in the Gold Coast hinterland in 2012.
I remember watching the pictures coming in from Perth that showed Jharal Yow Yeh’s trademark leap over a South Sydney Rabbitohs winger.
Everyone who watched that game remembers the moment he landed.
The Crash
It was like watching a car crash. You couldn’t look away. But when you saw the bones in his leg shatter, you wished that you had.
And that should have been the final chapter of his rugby league journey.
Doctors and surgeons said that the compound fracture of multiple bones in his leg was more consistent with those suffered by a motorcyclist who had come off his bike on a highway at high speed.
The end of his career beckoned, and no one would’ve thought any less of Yow Yeh for retiring then and there.
He would’ve quickly become a former star and the answer to a trivia question: Which Queensland winger debuted for both Queensland and Australia in the 2011 season?
But that’s not the story that he wrote.
The Recovery
This young Bronco committed himself to two years of rehabilitation.
Think about it. More than 700 days of single-minded commitment towards one goal: to play first grade again.
Even as his body was healing there would have been doubts for his mind to battle.
A mate of mine who went through a knee reconstruction once told me that getting your head right after such a major surgery was the hardest part.
You are constantly trying to clear the hurdles that your mind has put in your way to protect you from being hurt so horrifically again.
Yow Yeh’s injury would have been higher than most.
Would the limp he had developed after nearly a dozen major surgeries let him run at full stretch?
Would his mind be able to let him leave the ground to compete for a bomb? Could he ever be free of the fear of injury on the field again?
The Summit
On a suburban ground far away from Suncorp Stadium he got his answers.
A trial match rarely matters much, but this one in the 2014 pre-season did.
Yow Yeh was back in the maroon and gold, and back playing in the centres for the Broncos.
No one knew it at the time, but this was his Everest, and by climbing it, he’d laid to rest the demons in his body and his mind.
The Broncos deserve praise here.
Without their support and dedicated medical staff, it’s unlikely any of this would have been possible.
And without the determination of Yow Yeh, it certainly wouldn’t have been.
So why has this story that ended so far from a State of Origin decider or a grand final got so many people’s attention?
In a game constantly geared towards the highlights reel, the split-second timing of a Johnathan Thurston cut out pass or the long-range Cooper Cronk field goal gets the headlines.
But just for today, this remarkable story should replace them. Why?
Because the traditional soul of rugby league was once represented by the men who worked hard every day of the week and were proud to represent their clubs on the weekend.
A man who put himself through 10 operations, who got up every day for two years to go to rehab, just to play in a pre-season trial so that he could retire on his own terms?
It doesn’t get much prouder or harder working than that.
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