Jack Buckley knew.

He knew within steps, within seconds, but there was nothing he could say and only one thing he could do: keep running.

It was the middle of December in 2021, a few weeks into pre-season and a little over five months since Buckley’s knee had crumbled in a game at the MCG. It was his first time running on grass since surgery and his teammates knew it, so as Buckley jogged lightly onto the VAILO Community Centre oval, they lined up to cheer him on his way.

They were still carrying on as Buckley realised: this doesn’t feel good. At all.

“It’s a funny story in hindsight,” Buckley said.

“Everyone made a big deal; they were getting around me and it’s hard not to feel good when that happens; they were so happy. I remember I ran through and all I had to do at first was run across to the other side of the oval. But the whole way there I was thinking, ‘this is no good, there’s something wrong here, my knee should not feel like this.’

“From the first or second step I felt it, but I couldn’t run out like that and then go straight back in after all the fuss, so I kind of pumped out four of the worst laps you could ever see, I was running like an idiot. And then I went back inside thinking, ‘oh my god, what do we do now?’”

That feels like a long time ago now, but there are pieces and patches of his very long time in rehab that Buckley feels will always be a part of him.

There was another operation after that December jog, further setbacks, long chunks of time where he could barely do anything at all, testing, more testing and all sorts of exercises to rebuild his left leg when it kept refusing to grow.

“It was trial and error, over and over again,” he said.

“We saw so many people and tried so many things and I kept looking in the mirror and my right leg had muscle and my left had none at all.

“I was doing some weird exercises in the end. There was one where I had to stand and face the wall; my nose was basically up against the wall. Everyone would be in the gym, and I’d be over in the corner like I was in ‘time out,’ staring at the wall doing these weird squats that used to piss me off so much.

“I wasn’t much fun at that stage because every day was the same, so monotonous. Every time we walked over to do that one, I had to say ‘bear with me, I won’t be very much fun today.”

Buckley never doubted he would get back to play but did wonder whether he would come back with the speed and agility he had built his game around, and what he would have left to offer if those things were forever gone.

He had to manage his emotional state, too, to keep turning up, and looking back thinks he relied on too few people to help him get through the long, boring days. He felt separated from what was happening on the field during the tumultuous time that was season 2022, but looking back knows that he separated himself much more than being left out of anything.

One other thought kept gnawing at him: why does this all feel so hard?

“It was a bit of a weird one. Growing up, I definitely had some hard times and it sort of made me think, ‘I’m surprised this is affecting me as much as it is, because I’ve dealt with stuff in my life that is a lot worse than this.’ I’m actually a bit embarrassed at how I wasn’t myself last year, how much I let myself withdraw,” Buckley said.

“I learnt a lot. I actually had to put work into trying to figure it out and fight, not wait until I got to rock bottom or hope that it turned around if my knee just happened one day to feel good again. When all you want is a breakthrough and you feel like you’re working your arse off and it just isn’t happening, it does feel pretty dejecting, but I defaulted for a while there to pushing people away and dealing with it on my own, and I found out that’s the worst thing you can do.

“Rehab can isolate you, but you can isolate yourself just as much. I realised how many great people I have who I can lean on and who will always stick by me, and I feel like I’ve done that work now. I’ll never go back to that. Footy’s a game where anything can happen at any time, so if something was to happen again, I would be in a much better place to get through and deal with it.

“That’s the biggest thing I’ve had to navigate over the last couple of years. It tied into the whole rehab process more than people would probably think, and as difficult as it was to go through and even to look back on now, it’s something that has made me come back a lot stronger.”

Then there is his football, and the question of how Buckley has managed to pick up precisely where he left off, after a year-and-a-half out of the game just when he was getting started.

When he injured himself halfway through the first quarter of the game against Melbourne in round 17, 2021, he was playing in just his 17^th AFL game. It was just his 12^th game in the backline. After three years on the rookie list trying to work out a way into the side, he was still finding his way as a senior player, let alone as a key defender. But when he came back this year, he somehow returned playing even better football.

How? Buckley puts some of it down to the sense of comfort he was feeling in the weeks before he got injured. While he hadn’t played many games, he believed he had earned his spot in the side and felt he had found the position that best suited his speed, size, and competitive streak. And he was clear on what he needed to do to get picked each week.

“That’s why it was so hard when it happened, because I’d spent years trying to get in, and finally I was in. I was playing games in a row, I felt like I was going to get picked every week and I was thinking ‘I might have cemented a spot in an AFL team here,’" Buckley said.

“I was at that stage of thinking, ‘how good is this, every day is great, this is life as an AFL player.’ I was loving it. Everything was on the up and then it was taken away so suddenly and so unexpectedly.

“I had belief, which was huge, and something I struggled with in my first couple of years. I played wing in my first few games but I can remember Leon telling me to spend a few weeks with the backs in pre-season just so we had that in our back pocket, and after my first game down there Adam Schneider, who was the backs coach at the time, said ‘I want you again next week.’

“That just built confidence. I felt like I belonged down there, and it was a position I thought I could really make my own because it suits the attributes I have. And getting backed in by the coaches is such an intoxicating feeling. So, finding a home down there was massive and I felt like I had the chance to do something there, but looking back I was still a massive work in progress.

“Back then I was really just on my man. I was pretty raw when it came to understanding positioning and all the defensive craft that comes with playing the position. It was mostly just compete and try and halve contests, there wasn’t a heap of method at the start. But I was loving it. I felt like it was where I was meant to be, I had teammates who were helping me, and every week was better than the last. I thought it would keep going and going.”

It stopped, suddenly. But Buckley found ways to improve even when he couldn’t play. It helped that he had a specific role to get back to, rather than being stuck back in rookie-mode, hoping for any opening at all.

He watched AFL games with a clearer idea of who he would be returning to play on, and by chance spent a number of weeks in rehab with Phil Davis. He was able every day to listen, learn, ask questions, and pick up all sorts of advice on how to play down back.

“We had a lot of time together and when you spend a lot of time with Phil Davis, who has mastered the craft of defending and understands the game inside out, then there is so much insight you can gain out of that,” Buckley said.

“I had such a different focus to any other time in my career, even though I was injured. I knew I was a backman, for sure. I didn’t have that vague feeling about what I was coming back to do. It was, ‘I’m a defender, this is who I am and what I’m going to be,’ and it made it a lot easier to watch footy and think about footy rather than watching wing, watching high half-forward and basically every position on the ground.”

Buckley also returned under a new coaching team, with new plans, ideas, and expectations. They were ideas that pulled him out of ‘lockdown’ mode the second pre-season started, and that he knows helped him play his 18^th game looking not only like he hadn’t missed a beat after so long out, but like a better and more versatile defender capable of doing so many more things.

“We’re so focused on the details now, on positioning and system and all those sorts of things. To meet Brett Montgomery as the backline coach, to get to know him, watch vision with him and learn from him, he’s really taught me a lot about how everything connects together and how important every single little bit is for it to come together and work,” Buckley said.

“That’s been a big thing for me, and just being more confident in covering my man but also knowing it’s not me versus him, it’s us versus them. If I get a goal kicked against me, it’s not just my fault. We’re helping each other out all the time, so to come back with less of a ‘man’ focus than I had a couple of years ago has challenged me to take that next step as a player.

“I guess the more games you play the more you learn and the more confident you become to back yourself in terms of making decisions on the fly and not worrying about getting every single thing right. ‘Monty’ is big on making decisions, whether they’re right or wrong, rather than being caught in two minds, because you can fix wrong decisions but if you never back yourself to make one then it becomes a hard problem to solve.

“That’s been great, and to play as a group down there has been so much fun. When you know what you need to do and you’re out there with the same guys every week trying to just get the job done, the connection you build is so good. We have each other’s backs down there; we trust each other and look after each other. We’re trying to help each other out all the time and to go into games knowing that and thinking about that, it can only help all of us play some better footy.”