AS the calendar flicked to December last year, it seemed all the stars were aligned for Marcus Marigliani.
One year after Essendon had delisted him, Marigliani was on the cusp of gaining a second chance, per courtesy of a pre-season with St Kilda in a bid to gain a spot on its rookie list.
With a knee tidy-up procedure behind him in November, Marigliani was enthusiastically looking forward to his chance to impress.
As well as he trained, the Saints decided to overlook Marigliani for a bunch of younger players.
While disappointed it was nothing compared to the devastation that was unexpectedly lurking around the corner.
Marigliani ruptured a posterior cruciate ligament in his left knee at the start of the 2011 season and he went in for a “clean out” operation in November.
Four weeks after the surgery, Marigliani began his pre-season at St Kilda, which, on reflection, was too early as he had to return to hospital for another “clean out” operation in January.
And, that’s where Marigliani’s world was turned upside down.
He contracted Golden staph from the surgery and it proved a recurring theme. Marigliani three times endured Golden staph from subsequent operations.
During a three week stay in hospital, Marigliani had four surgeries, three of them to clean away the Golden staph.
Marigliani said tests repeatedly had to be taken to discover what strain of Golden staph had infected his knee.
“A doctor was telling me there are 147 different staphs,” Marigliani said.
“Basically, I was on five different anti-biotics. They were guessing on what kind of staph infection I had to get rid of it.”
It was the first injury Marigliani had endured playing football and what he thought was a simple “clean out’ became the most harrowing experience he’s encountered.
“Physically, it wasn’t a drama, but the toll it took on me mentally was something else,” he said.
“I’m active all the time. As a carpenter I’m up and down building sites and outside work I play football. I’m always training. If it’s not at the footy club, I’m swimming or doing weights.
“To sit in a room for three and a half weeks and the only time I left that room was for surgery …. It was one of the toughest things mentally I’ve had to deal with.”
Marigliani admitted he was “pretty naïve” about the implications of Golden staph. When first told about the infection he simply said ‘how do we go about fixing it?’
As he lay in hospital recovering from the first operation to rid the Golden staph, Marigliani’s ambivalence grew to concern when his leg ballooned.
“It was then I realised the seriousness of it. I realised ‘this is not a simple fix’,” Marigliani said.
“With the second operation I’m thinking ‘I might be in a bit of trouble here, I hope this operation gets rid of it’
“After two weeks in hospital, I’m thinking ‘I want to get the hell out of here. I just wanted to move, I didn’t want to be lying in bed, not being able to move my knee.
“It really broke me when, two or three days after that second surgery, my knee blew up again and the infection was still clearly in my knee and I had to go in for a third operation.
“That’s the one that broke me.”
When the third operation finally expunged the infection, Marigliani was literally a shell of his former shelf.
As well as the mental toll, there were physical ramifications – he’d dropped 11 kilos.
Rule of thumb is that after not moving your legs for 48 hours, a person’s leg muscles begin to deplete, especially the quads and glutes.
“Not being able to put any pressure on my legs, you walk out with tooth picks,” Marigliani said.
Dr Bruce Reid, the Essendon Football Club doctor, told Marigliani he should write off the 2012 season.
And, this was on top of missing three month’s work as he went about his rehab.
Missing a footy season did not sit well with Marigliani, who embarked on a comeback campaign that required a daily visit to a gym, where, by his own admission, he would “hobble in”.
Initially, the exercise regime was as simple as trying to bend his knee and he had a machine at his home that would assist in bending his knee for him.
It was a slow, laborious process as he started to rebuild the muscle in his leg.
“I couldn’t actually walk or run because my muscles had depleted so much,” he said.
“I had to build up my muscles to enable me to move my knee. Then there was a fine line between trying to build up your muscle with squats and walking or running, but then I had to pull back because I’m re-aggravating my knee.
“It was a tough situation.”
So, too, was having to watch all his teammates train while he undertook a methodical rehab.
Marigliani felt both “helpless” and detached from the club. He gained an appreciation of just what it is like to deal with a long term injury.
“Anyone who tells you it’s not hard is kidding themselves,” he said.
“I’d previously look at the rehab guys and think ‘gee, that’s easy’, but it is just so tough.”
After months rehabilitating his knee Marigliani returned to Sandringham’s Development League in June where he played two games before being selected for the match against Casey Scorpions.
While he’s still nowhere near 100 per cent, Marigliani featured among the Zebras best. It was an encouraging return, but really Marigliani said he is just happy to be playing again.
Given the January from hell he endured, it’s understandable.
Last Modified on 18/07/2012 16:23