by DOC » Wed Mar 13, 2024 1:25 pm
Andrew Capel wrote this. I’m biased but this shows the good of football clubs and the perseverance of the young man.
It took a whopping 560 days between games and 13 months of physical and mental torture but South Adelaide footballer Zac Dumesny is finally back playing the sport he loves.
Last Saturday – 392 days since undergoing brain surgery – the 21-year-old former top AFL draJ prospect returned to the footy field amid liKle fanfare in what was a red- leKer day for him, his family and his SANFL club.
Wearing a helmet for the first Ome, Dumesny played all four quarters of a SANFL trial game for the Panthers against Woodville-West Torrens at Noarlunga Oval – just over a year aJer he underwent an eight-hour brain operaOon that leJ him virtually having to learn to walk and talk again.
When the popular Dumesny was lying in his bed at the Memorial Hospital last February, he thought his football career might be over.
Now he is sporOng a smile from ear to ear and dreaming big aJer safely negoOaOng his comeback game.
“It’s a preKy special feeling to be back playing again,’’ Dumesny told the Sunday Mail. “It’s something I never really expected aJer the surgery. In fact, if you’d told me that I’d get to this point I’d probably have laughed at you and thought it’s not realisOc.
“To look back at where I was then to where I am now, I’m just so proud and really can’t believe it.’’
Rewind 13 months and Dumesny – a Panthers product from ChrisOes Beach – had just survived a complicated, eight-hour operaOon to remove a brain tumour aJer he had seen a neurologist aJer being troubled by headaches for more than a year and a half.
An MRI revealed “a large cyst on my brain which had a tumour connected to it,” Dumesny said.
Prior to surgery, he was told that the operaOon could affect his ability to speak or walk
and there could be complicaOons. And then there was the threat of the tumour being malignant.
“The whole thing was preKy frightening, not knowing how things were going to turn out and hearing about all the things that could go wrong,’’ Dumesny said.
“It was a tricky operaOon and really scary but fortunately everything went really well.’’
The surgery on the back of Dumesny’s head – on February 4 last year – was supposed to go for three hours.
Instead, it was so complicated that it went for eight.
But the Dumesny family – Zac, mum Nicole, dad Duane and sister Chloe – got the news they had prayed for, that the tumour was benign.
“When I went in for surgery they weren’t certain whether the tumour was cancerous or not,’’ Zac said. “Thank goodness it wasn’t.’’
Dumesny – with support from his family and girlfriend Samantha Hiern – spent a week in hospital recovering before beginning his long and slow road to recovery.
With the operaOon deemed a success and his long-term prognosis good, Dumesny’s aKenOon quickly turned to playing football again.
In his AFL draJ year in 2020, the 187cm uOlity had been considered one of SA’s top draJ prospects aJer being a member of the AFL Academy and having played league football for South.
But he was surprisingly overlooked at the draJ, where Riley Thilthorpe (Adelaide), Lachie Jones (Port Adelaide), Corey Durdin (Carlton) and Luke Edwards (West Coast) were among the Croweaters to find AFL homes. Dumesny has never given up on his AFL dream and was determined to play football again.
“IniOally, it was almost like I had to learn how to walk and talk again,” he said of his rehabilitaOon program.
“Exercise-wise, it was basically three to four months of doing nothing because, as part of my recovery, I wasn’t allowed to get my heart rate up. That killed me mentally because I’m a very acOve person. The most exercise I was allowed was to go for a very slow walk along my local beach (ChrisOes Beach).
“AJer four months, I was able to incorporate a few more things, starOng with jumping on the exercise bike – at very low intensity – and then progressing to light weights and skill work around the footy club. Then I was able to start running again.’’
Just as Dumesny was making good progress, he had a setback. He suffered an abdominal hernia that required surgery, stalling his recovery for six weeks.
But his determinaOon to return to football, which his surgeon said was a possibility, never wavered.
Dumesny upped the ante with his training in November, was given the green light to join non-contact training in December and on February 4 – exactly a year aJer his surgery – he was given the medical all-clear to resume full training, provided he wore a helmet.
“That was a special day,’’ he said.
Dumesny played in an internal trial for South under lights two weeks ago – “I had a bit of trouble adjusOng to the lights, which will come with Ome,’’ he said – before being selected to take on the Eagles.
Playing at half-back, that was his first compeOOve game since round 19, 2022 – also against the Eagles at Noarlunga. “I don’t usually get nervous before games but I was preKy nervous last week,’’ Dumesny said.
“It was such a long build-up and so much work had gone into it. I was just hoping to get through the game and not really worrying too much about performance, but I felt really comfortable out there and played OK, which gives me something to build on.
“I sOll have some liKle ongoing issues, including balance, which will improve with Ome, but I’m just very grateful to be in the posiOon I’m in now. There was a Ome when I didn’t think I would play football again so ...
now that I’ve had a taste I want more.
“I’m sOll young and know I can get beKer and beKer and that it will take Ome to find my best form but I’m excited to see what comes.
“I’ve been playing football for preKy much my whole life, it’s what I know, and I want to challenge myself to play at the highest level I can.’’
Dumesny is studying speech pathology at Flinders University and said the work he had
done in his rehabilitaOon would put him “in the box seat to help others’’.
Coach Jarrad Wright hailed Dumesny’s comeback, describing it as “a great story’’.
“I’m unbelievably proud of him, not only from a football sense but just to be able to get back to full health,’’ he said.
“I remember siing in the hospital room with Zac post-surgery, which was a daunOng place to be, seeing what he had gone through and all the what-ifs... to watch him get beKer day by day and show such great determinaOon and perseverance that epitomises him.
“Watching Zac on the weekend, it didn’t look like he had missed 18 months of footy, which is a real credit to him.’’