In the latest instalment of Melbourne Storm’s documentary series, Melbourne Made, Xavier Coates gives an insight into his injury recovery.
Coates was having a fairy tale debut season at Melbourne Storm. He had opened the season with 11 tries in 12 Rounds, scoring four tries in Round 7, followed by three in Round 8. Recording 80 minutes each game, his spot on the Storm wing was all but secured and he was quickly becoming a favourite amongst the purple faithful.
His success continued as Representative Round approached, being selected on the wing for the Queensland Maroons for the third consecutive year. Coates looked unstoppable.
27 minutes into Origin Game I, the flyer went down with an ankle injury. Initially ignoring it, he was eventually walked off the field with the medic, with scans later confirming surgery was required.
Melbourne Made | Ep.4 Next Man Up
“The sort of time frame they gave me was around eight weeks recovery,” Coates shared in Melbourne Made, episode four.
“You look at some of the boys that have got injuries and they're pretty much out for the season and you can see their attitude towards training - it's unreal.
“For me to be on the side line for around eight weeks I shouldn't be complaining at all. I should be getting straight into it and that's what I've been trying to do. I've been trying to implement what those boys are doing with their training into my training.”
Coates has every right to feel sorry for himself, riding the highs of a cheering crowd, to the quiet solitude of a couch – but he doesn’t. Instead, he insists on finding the positives in an otherwise unfortunate situation.
“That's something I learned from Welchy (Christian Welch),” the winger said.
“I remember him doing an interview when he came back from Sydney and he landed in Melbourne and they interviewed him and they said ‘how they how do you feel about the injury?’ and he said, ‘it's obviously not great but there's a lot of people doing it a lot worse than me’.
“I think the main thing is looking at the positives and moving on from there.”
