Life After Football for Luke Cain
Season of 1999 and I was just 19 when a freak accident left me a quadriplegic and confined to a wheelchair. I was playing for Rosebud in a game against Hastings, when I made a lead from full-forward which was to be my last; colliding with a team mate I fell to the ground unable to move. We both had eyes for the ball and didn’t see each other coming. It was very hard to deal with at first hearing you will never walk again, but after seven long months of rehab I finally made it home to continue a normal as possible life. Friends and family built me a unit with all the modifications needed to accommodate life in a chair.
First thing I did after leaving hospital was buy myself a fishing boat, after deciding my mates 14ft tinny was not the safest for a guy in a wheelchair, although I did go out in it a few times. For a while there with limited muscle strength and no finger movement I could only catch the smaller fish, flathead and squid. While I loved just being out on the water and enjoyed just watching my mates pull in the bigger fish like gummy sharks and snapper I soon got sick of not catching one myself. I designed a rod holder to attach to my chair and started exercising to get strong enough to wind one in. And soon enough I caught my first snapper, and 5 minutes later another.
While the fishing was a great hobby I loved to compete and had played many sports other then football previous to my accident, so I found myself searching the web for a sport I could now do. In 2007 I took up the sport of target shooting. Currently ranked number 2 in Australia I made the Australian team earlier this year and competed in my first international competition in Korea, where I shot two qualifying scores for the London Paralympics games. My average scores have gone from 592/600 in 08 to 596/600 in 09 with my best score a 597 at national titles in Adelaide this year.
While my football ambitions and dreams were cut short I now have a new dream of competing at the Olympics in London 2012, well on my way there I believe I will be competitive with the best in the world by then. While I still love my football I go to watch my brothers Sean and Ben Cain play every week and follow my cousins the Cloke brothers closely. To play with my brothers is something I would have really loved to do, but watching them play well is just as good. I have a training camp this week in Sydney, and will miss the game between Frankston and Rye. So I’m asking all the Rye boys to lift, put there head over the ball, go in hard and give there all because I want see them play in the Grand final and live the dream I never got to. Good luck boys Go Demons!!
Last Modified on 31/08/2009 16:14