AFL great Matthew Lloyd has revealed he lost eight kilos in 1996 after suffering an injury similar to Christian Petracca‘s four broken ribs, lacerations to the spleen and a punctured lung.
Playing for Essendon in the 1996 preliminary final, Lloyd described his incident as “innocuous” having gone in with a hip and shoulder against Swans star Mark Bayes.
“You feel like you’re winded … I went off for a while and likewise (to Petracca) thought I may have been winded so I went back on the ground,” Lloyd revealed on Nine’s Footy Classified.
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“Half-time came about and I felt like I was losing all the colour in my face … I couldn’t really concentrate on anything anyone was saying because the pain started to get so strong and pretty much by that night I went home.
“Unfortunately in Kings Cross Hospital (St Vincent’s) in Sydney they didn’t know how to treat it, they filled me with morphine. Suddenly I felt better, got home and lucky my parents were there because otherwise I could’ve gone to sleep or fell unconscious, (I) would’ve died in that situation because of the blood loss.
“I asked my mum if she could take me to the bathroom, I passed blood, they called doctor Bruce Reid up and I’m writhing in the bed by this stage, in absolutely horrific pain, whenever I hear spleen I feel for the person because the pain is that excruciating.
“Bruce Reid said ‘can you just settle down, settle down, have you got shoulder pain?’ And I said ‘my shoulder pain is killing me’. He said ‘call an ambulance, he’s got a ruptured spleen’.
“And I was pretty much in agony – they said the good news is the bleeding has stopped, the bad news is you’ve got eight days of pretty much a lot of pain ahead of you while the blood subsides. I lost eight kilos and I didn’t feel like I was right for six months.”
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Lloyd’s reflection comes as Melbourne defends its decision to allow Petracca to return to the field after his collision with Darcy Moore.
9news Melbourne reporter Tom Morris revealed Petracca suffered a grade five spleen laceration which is “as serious as it gets without actually losing the spleen” and will be transferred out of the intensive care unit on Thursday or Friday.
“It is highly unlikely he plays again this season, I’m told best case scenario is 10 to 12 weeks … his injuries are comparable to a car crash victim,” he said.
Petracca suffered the injury at the end of the first quarter and returned during the second against Collingwood before he was subbed out at half-time.
Melbourne have come under criticism for allowing him to go back on the field with football boss Alan Richardson defending the decision.
“I want to make it clear that we have full confidence in how our medical team responded and the procedures that were followed,” he said in a statement to Footy Classified.
“Their expertise and swift actions have been crucial in managing Christian’s injury and subsequent recovery.”
“He wanted to play on, Christian Petracca, but there were Collingwood players in the second quarter that remarked to Petracca that he should go off, that’s how unwell he looked,” Morris added.