Luckless defender Alex Johnson is confident he can continue his AFL career, revealing the advice he was given by surgeon Julian Feller after his sixth knee reconstruction.
“I’ve got a really good relationship with Julian now, he has done the last couple of ACL reconstructions on me,” Johnson told SEN’s Whateley.
“He is really honest with me and he said what do you want to do, and I said, what do you think I should do, I would love to continue playing footy.
“He said, yeah I think you should. He said the way this one happened, it is just pure bad luck and you look at what happened with your left knee, that’s as strong as anything now, you don’t have to worry about that anymore.
“There is no science behind it, but it is reasonably common for people to do the other knee if they’ve already done one.
“He said now that both are reconstructed, you won’t favour either, you’ll be strong in both, you’ll rehab both and I back you to get back and play.”
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Johnson also explained how he has taken faith from Collingwood’s Tyson Goldsack, who has played a key role in the Magpies’ finals series, despite tearing his ACL in this year’s JLT Community Series.
“I’d love to be playing early rounds of 2019,” Johnson said.
“Julian did exactly the same operation on Tyson Goldsack at the start of this year and as we have seen, he has played the last couple games and playing in a Preliminary Final this week and he is only six months post an ACL reconstruction.
“I’ve had the same thing done and I back myself to get back and contribute for the majority of 2019.”