After 14 months out injured, Leeds United and Socceroo defender Paddy Kisnorbo reveals his heartbreak at missing the World Cup last year and his determination to bounce back...

There’s an old saying in football that the game can be good to some and cruel to others. If you’re one of the elite few who manage to escape the shackles of adolescent distractions and forge a career that many of us can only replicate on a games console, it’s fair to assume that the game – and fate, to an extent – has indeed been kind.

Yet, for every professional footballer out there living the dream, there are those along the way that encounter the odd nightmare – like Socceroo defender Paddy Kisnorbo.

With his boarding pass to South Africa virtually stamped, Kisnorbo’s dreams of playing in a World Cup were dashed last year when he ruptured his Achilles tendon less than three months before the tournament was due to kick off. Forget about a nightmare on Elm Street, this was a nightmare on Elland Road for the Leeds United defender. Almost 14 months out of the game would ensue for Kisnorbo, and while this period was the toughest of his life, he’s emerged from the ordeal physically and mentally stronger. So, attackers beware…

By late June things were finally beginning to look good for the former South Melbourne defender. He’d just agreed to terms on a new deal with Leeds United and in a few days will re-unite with his teammates for pre-season training. Rather than feeling relieved at being offered a new contract – as one would expect, given he was in the final year of his current deal and had to prove his fitness to earn a new contract – the high-pitched levels of enthusiasm evident in Kisnorbo’s voice are attributed to the prospect of playing football again. This, he says, is all that matters.

“To be honest, it’s not even about the contract – it’s about just playing football again,” he tells FourFourTwo exclusively. “I had a hard year where I ruptured my Achilles two months before the World Cup and I had a few setbacks. Mentally, it’s very hard. Contract-wise, it wasn’t the main thing for me. The main thing for me was coming back and playing football and trying to do my best.”

To the outsider looking in, there was never any doubt that Kisnorbo would return from his year-long layoff with injury. After all, he wasn’t the first to suffer a serious injury in professional sport and certainly won’t be the last. But what outsiders aren’t privy to are the internal battles professional footballers encounter throughout the process. There’s the angst of potential setbacks in rehabilitation. There’s the loss of form, fitness and inevitably, their position. There’s the loneliness and the isolation. All of this was no different for Kisnorbo. Having already been subjected to lengthy spells on the sidelines with previous club Leicester City after sustaining successive knee ligament injuries, Kisnorbo was well aware of the uphill battle to make a full recovery. This time around, however, his situation was compounded by the fact that he was robbed of a potential place among Australia’s 2010 World Cup squad. And only now is Kisnorbo beginning to come to terms with what was taken away from him.

“Realistically, I probably just got over it about a month or two ago,” he says. “It was probably the hardest time of my life. As a footballer and as you grow up, you want to play in a World Cup – the biggest sporting event in the world. Unfortunately I missed it.

“It’s still tough to talk about it because back then, so much goes through your mind and you think so much. Every scenario pops into your head – there’s not one good thing while you’re injured that comes into [your mind]. But at the end of it, I’ve come back a stronger person, mentally and physically, and if I can bring it into my game, then that will be the reward for what’s happened to me during the past year. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever dealt with in my career.”

In the midst of this angst did he ever contemplate throwing in the towel? “There were times when you think, ‘Is this worth it? Should I be doing this? Stuff it all’,” he reveals. “I’d never throw in the towel but you always think about it. No matter what anyone says, when you have a long layoff, to get to a positive stage you always go through a negative stage. It’s normal. You think, ‘I’d rather be with my family and be happy’. Sometimes that’s what you think when things are getting tough.”

It probably wasn’t until Lucas Neill led the Socceroos out onto the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban for their opening match of the 2010 World Cup against Germany that reality set in for Kisnorbo. Having been in and out of the Socceroos squad for the best part of eight years – which included a two-year omission from the national team after he, like many of his fellow teammates, failed to fire at the 2007 Asian Cup – Kisnorbo’s international career received a lifeline in August 2009 when Pim Verbeek handed the defender a starting berth in Australia’s 3-0 win over Ireland. Solid performances for both club and country made Verbeek re-think his defensive plans and the chances of Kisnorbo fulfilling his childhood dream was beginning to look good. Then on 22 March, 2010, disaster struck when he was stretchered off after just six minutes into Leeds’ clash against Millwall. The diagnosis was a ruptured Achilles tendon, and with that, his World Cup dream over.

Not surprisingly, watching what could have been wasn’t on his shortlist of ‘must see TV’ during the English summer. “To be honest with you, I couldn’t watch the World Cup, it was just so hard to take. I think I watched the players walking out and once I heard the anthem, I thought ‘you know what, I can’t do this’,” he explains. “I was crying and you think, ‘how could this have happened to me?’ I just couldn’t do it to myself because then your brain starts thinking, ‘How come? Why me?’ All these scenarios come into your head. I just wanted to distance myself a bit and worry about getting better.”

Kisnorbo achieved that by looking at the bigger picture. Setting little targets, he says, went a long way in helping during a lengthy spell on the sidelines, along with the continual support from his family around him and the brilliant medical staff at Leeds made the difference in staying focused.

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“You just have to tick off little boxes and little stages,” he says. “For me, it’s not about looking long-term but looking at the short-term. My wife had to put up with a lot. It wasn’t an easy thing. I had my friends ringing me every day, I had my family on Skype and I had to deal with the situation as best I could. One of the biggest supports was Harvey Sharman at Leeds United. He was great. He’s like family to me because he’s been through it all – he did everything with me. He came to New York [for treatment for an infection], he came to see me nearly every day – he did it all with me. I owe a lot to him – he did everything for me.

“Hopefully this has made me a stronger person. I’ve never wanted to play football more. Football is my life but sometimes it puts everything into perspective that football isn’t everything, your health is.” The image of the blood-soaked bandage wrapped around Kisnorbo’s forehead is a fitting image of the tough Melbourne-born defender. In fact, it personifies him perfectly. It represents a player who’s battle-hardened (and with the scars to prove it!). A player who, once he crosses the white line, makes his presence felt in a big way, whether it is head-butting the back of his opponent’s head when the ball is in the air or a bone-crunching tackle to get the ball. Yet beyond the tough guy persona is a man who’s the complete opposite away from the football field. Just as the bandage protected scar tissue that was sensitive and delicate, Kisnorbo’s warrior-esque exterior acts in the same manner off the field of play. “I’m not that type of guy,” he says in regards to the ‘tough guy’ image. “I was head-butted in the face and it’s just one of those things. I might look tough but I’m really a pussycat in the end!”

His on-field bravery has endeared him to many. Coaches applaud it. The fans love it. His uncompromising nature has seen him collect a Players’ Player of the Year Award at both Leicester City (2006/07) and Leeds United (2009/10), while he was also named in the League One PFA Team of the Year during that same season. Who says it doesn’t pay to be tough?

“I’m a simple player. I like to defend and the more clean sheets I can help keep the better. That’s my job,” he says, modestly. “I’m not a midfielder or a striker, I’m a defender, so as long as I can keep my man from scoring and help the other defenders around me keep clean sheets then I’ve done my job.”

His popularity among the fans, at all of his club sides in Australia, Scotland and England, has always been high. After all, fans value attributes such as effort, determination and bravery. And Kisnorbo gives that in spades.

“It’s been great,” he says. “At the end of the day, I’m living a dream that a lot of people want to achieve. There are so many up and coming players trying to do the same – that’s why I never take anything for granted.

“I still work hard and still do the things I need to do because I know there are some people out there that haven’t had the opportunity that I’ve had. But I’ve done it hard – I haven’t had the easy way. That’s why I continue to do what I do because I know how hard it is to get to where I am now.”

It’s a mentality that has helped Kisnorbo overcome a number of obstacles during his career. Just like a nagging defender niggling at your heels, Kisnorbo refuses to give up easily. So it should come as no surprise that the desire to represent Australia at Brazil 2014 is part of what drives him.

“Definitely,” he responds immediately with regard to playing at the 2014 World Cup. “After what I’ve been through, I want to be there. I’m not going to lie: I want to be there. I want to play in the biggest sporting event in the world. I want to represent my country as many times as I can, and I want to do that because I haven’t done that for the past 14 months because of injury.”

For Kisnorbo, to get there the plan is simple: play well and the rest will take care of itself. And given Socceroos coach Holger Osieck has made it known that form will essentially get you a call-up, it’s a nice confidence booster for a player that’s been out of the game for so long.

“Every coach has their ways of picking a team or picking players that he wants in his squad,” he says. “All I can do is try my best and play as best I can for Leeds. I can’t think of anything else. He’s got his own methods like every other gaffer has, so what he does and what he chooses is completely up to him.

“It’s great to know that he likes to give people a chance and hopefully I get a chance one day. I just want to play good for Leeds and whatever happens after that happens.

“I just want to play football,” Kisnorbo concludes. “When I got injured, my main aim was to play football again and now that I’ve got that chance, I want to do it as much as possible. I want to play as much football as I can, and as well as I can and let everything else take care of itself.”

This article appeared in the November 2011 issue of Australian FourFourTwo magazine. To buy back copies of this issue call 03-8317-8121 with a credit card to hand.

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