Road to Recovery: Kildare's TJ Nolan opens up on horrific injury
TJ Nolan in control of possession for Kildare. A serious injury ruled him out of action and now he is eager to make a return later in the year
TJ, can you take us back to that fateful day on the 15th of April? How did it all start for you on that particular day?
I suppose, like any match day, you go through the same routine, not doing too much. I was carb-loading the last two days before, just to get my energy up. My go-to meal before a game would be chicken and pasta. I collected Laurence’s lads, the two Senans and Ruaidhri, and drove them to Johnstown House Hotel for 5pm, and we met there for a while and then got the bus over to Kinnegad.
What was the mood like?
It was good. We had the two wins before us, so we were just looking forward to the game ahead. We had all our prep done. There were a few showers during the day, and we were saying in the car we were hoping that it would be all right for the evening, but it just got worse once we went out for the warm-up.
You must have been happy with the way things were going in that first half. They were probably favourites, but you were doing well?
Yeah, they had won the Hogan Cup with Mullingar CBS so they had a lot of momentum with a lot of lads playing in that. We knew that it was going to be tough but we felt confident in ourselves that we were going to put up a performance. There was a strong breeze there. We probably had a bit of a slow start, but once we settled down and got into it, we were happy.
Can you take us through the incident where you picked up the injury, do you remember much about it?
I remember a small bit. I think I was cutting in off the left wing and I was taking a shot with my right foot. I didn't really connect well with the shot, unfortunately. I dropped it short and when my right foot came back down to the ground one of the Westmeath lads who was diving in to block the shot connected with my leg when it was planted and unfortunately knocked the bones out of place. I knew straight away, there was serious pain. I just remember they brought me into an empty room in the clubhouse there, and I was just waiting for an ambulance; that's all I remember, really. They gave me the Green Whistle once the ambulance came, and that helped me through to the hospital. I was brought over to Tullamore Hospital and was just waiting there. I think it was around midnight on Wednesday, but I had to wait till Friday afternoon for surgery. There were a few hip surgeries on Thursday, and there was no surgeon available on Wednesday night. They were giving me painkillers every few hours in the hospital so it was manageable but still obviously uncomfortable.
In medical terms how severe is the injury?
I broke my tibia and fibula. I was lucky in a way that they're just two straightforward breaks.
They put a plate in along the tibia and got that realigned. I've been over to Tullamore twice already and I'm actually going back again in the morning (Thursday). I've been in the boot for the last six weeks, non-weightbearing and not being able to do much. From tomorrow I'm hoping to get the boot off and start walking again with just even a crutch or whatever I can do and I can start into a bit of rehab then take it from there.
What's the recovery then, TJ?
I was told it's three to six months after surgery before you can go back playing contact sports and that's all dependent on how the bone knits back together. Rehab wise it's probably different from the ACL that I had where you have to rebuild back up the muscle and the flexibility, whereas with this I just have to give it time to knit back together and heal together.
Is that your mindset, you have to keep thinking like that?
Yeah, I have to think positive. I'm hoping if I can get back playing any bit of football this year, it'd be great for me. That's the target I have for my head and when you have a goal at the end of your rehab it makes it a bit more straightforward that you can hit your target.
What was it like for you to watch the lads go on and win the Leinster title in Parnell Park?
It was great. It's probably a goal we set out at the start of the year. We wanted to win something. Niall (Cronin) had been involved the last few years with the same group of lads and we fell just short, whether that was in the Linster Final or semi-finals. We hadn’t really got that breakthrough of winning the Leinster so that was our main goal. The lads had their two best games in the semi-final and final which really helped. Yeah, it was just a great win, a great day.
The lads kept me involved. I’d go over when they were training on a Friday evening or Sunday morning and try to keep involved that way.
This was your last year with the U20’s but you got a call from the seniors?
Yeah, just before Christmas. With Athy and Sallins going well, there was space, so I got in for a few months and even got a trip to Portugal! That was good. It's a great standard; it's where you want to be. You want to be playing senior football for Kildare. It was a real eye-opener, and I learned so much, and I was only in there for a few weeks. The pace and the physicality, even the skills, everything's being tested, and it's great. I even told the lads, "You're going to get better by being in an environment like that because it's just at such an elite level."
You had a very good year with Larries last year, getting to the Intermediate Final against Sallins.
Sallins is a strong team. We were a bit up and down, but we thought we could give them a rattle in the Final. We probably didn't keep it as tight as we thought we would. We thought that if we could keep it tight as we came down to the end, we might be able to make something, but it was just unfortunate on the day.
St Laurence’s might be described as a rural club, but it’s very much a community club, very much a family club. Look at the names there: the Treacys, the Lawlors, the Gruffertys, the Wheelers, O’Dwyers?
There's definitely a lot of family names that you'd see on team sheets over the years, a lot of similar ones. It’s a great community, and we're fairly tight-knit as a team, and we all get on well with each other.
What was it like growing up as your Mam, Aisling, was one of the seven Treacy sisters who were famous camogie players in Kildare and Larries.
Yeah, they'd be fairly well known around Kildare. They won many Camogie championships. We were always down in Larries playing football or hurling, knocking around, watching games and playing. My cousin is James Donnelly; there are only two months between us, so we'd be great friends and would have played a lot of football and hurling together all the way up. He missed out on U20 this year; he had a hamstring problem he picked up in the championship. He would have been on the squad or even pushing to start. Unfortunate for him, but he's back playing for the Larries now.
My Dad, Tom, is originally from Ballinrobe in Mayo and my younger sister, Grace, plays football and camogie and won a Leinster minor camogie with Kildare this year. My Grandfather, Tom Nolan, won an intermediate championship with Carlow.
Who did you look up to when you were starting off or growing up?
Starting off, probably Padraig O'Neill would have been one of the big ones. He was the main Larries man playing with Kildare. 2010/2011 would have been my earliest memories of football. I wouldn't remember much before, or how well Kildare were going, so Padraig was a Larries man, so you were always drawn to him. Johnny Doyle, of course, is just like a Kildare legend, so you'd look at Johnny and see how well he was playing.
Karl O’Dwyer would have helped us a lot at underage. Mam, of course, would probably be slagging me if I didn't mention her. The number of medals she has, and all her sisters have, so yeah, they're definitely the winning ways or something to look at, and that's for sure.
What would your ambition in life and in football be, TJ?
That’s a good question, now, Pat. Well, in football, obviously, when you're a young lad, you dream about playing for Kildare, so obviously that's one of the dreams. Maybe winning something with Larries, the county championship, would be lovely. When you're young, you probably looked up to the lads on the ‘09 team winning a senior championship, and that’s something you want to do. Before we do that, we'd have to win an intermediate. We have a young squad so hopefully now, in the next few years, we can start competing well there. Then outside of football I’m studying PE and Maths teaching at DCU, so I’ll probably go down that route for a while anyway.
Any danger if you're heading off to Australia on us?
No, no, no, I don't think so. Australia or Dubai, a few people have mentioned it to me, but I don't see myself going abroad now, to be honest. I think I'll just say "local".
