Former Black Ferns player Grace Brooker has switched to Aussie Rules. Photo / Photosport
Nina Poletti for LockerRoom
Some injuries you’re just not meant to come back from. Grace Brooker certainly wasn’t meant to return from hers – a ruptured patella tendon in her third test for the Black Ferns in 2021.
It flipped a rugby career trending upwards into a world of pain and uncertainty. Her injury led to panic attacks and social anxiety.
Yet, four years later, Brooker is defying the odds. After returning to the Black Ferns and Super Rugby Aupiki, she’s carved a new path for female athletes, making history as Essendon’s first contracted rookie in the AFLW – all while managing chronic pain.
Unsure whether she would be re-contracted with the Black Ferns after her comeback, Brooker began to look for an adventure elsewhere. Even across the Ditch.
“When I was a kid, whenever an AFL game came on TV, my Dad would tell me this was the best game of sport in the world,” she says.
“While my goal was always to make the Black Ferns, I also wanted to be the best athlete that I could be. So to be the best athlete, I figured I’d have to play the best sport, and I sent my highlights video to the recruitment officer for all of the AFLW clubs in Australia.”
After a season with Matatū, Brooker has code-hopped to Australian Rules, signing with Melbourne club Essendon. She’s been training with the Bombers since May.
Settling into a sport she’s never played before has been daunting, she admits, but the players and management have welcomed her warmly.
“These girls are so fit – I’ve never been one of the least fit in a team before but it’s the case here,” Brooker laughs. “They’ve integrated me really slowly to take care of the person before the player, so everyone’s been great.
“A lot of my rugby skills are transferrable but the handballing I’m having to work on – I’m an absolute beginner.”
A sports-mad kid, Brooker began playing rugby aged 5 in North Canterbury – one of the only girls in the junior teams.
Heading to boarding school at 13, she joined the Christchurch Girls’ High School team – playing for her school on Wednesdays before heading back to Hurunui to play netball and rugby on weekends.
At 14, she turned out for the High School Old Boys women’s team. “There weren’t the same rules back then, so I was playing against Black Ferns as a Year 10 student. I told the club I was a flanker but they were like, ‘Nope, get on the wing, you skinny little girl’. I haven’t been out of the backs since,” Brooker laughs.
Still a kid, she played the University of Canterbury in a final where her opposite was USA sevens player Naya Tapper. “We lost 70-0 and I’m pretty sure she was responsible for about 50 of those points, just running around me,” she says. “I was too slow to keep up and whenever the ball came to my wing, I could hear my Dad from the sideline just telling me to hang in there.”
Despite the brutal loss, Brooker’s work around the field was noticed early and she made the Canterbury Under-18 squad at 14. At 18, she made her Farah Palmer Cup debut for Canterbury – the day after they won the competition, she was back in the classroom.
“I turned up in my Canterbury kit, went to the Dean and asked if I could go join in the Mad-Monday celebrations. He looked at me, rolled his eyes, and said, oh go on then. I was lucky to have such supportive teachers – I loved school, and they always knew I’d try my best,” she says.
In her first year at university, Brooker received her first Black Ferns contract and was selected for the national sevens development team.
“I was in rugby camps all though O Week so when I turned up at uni a couple of weeks later, everyone had already found their friends. I hated being at the halls and spent a lot of time at home when I wasn’t training. I’d wake up at 4.30am to train, go to classes, train again and then go home – it was a pretty low time but I did eventually make a few friends,” she says.
After missing all of the 2018 tours, Brooker’s luck turned, making her debut in August 2019, in the last game of the season against Australia at Eden Park – becoming Black Fern No 214.
“My coach John Haggart told me, ‘If you get the ball, just run!’ I did, and they were the greatest 15 minutes of my life. It’s true you just float over the field when you wear that black jersey, you just feel superhuman,” Brooker says.
After a tumultuous 2020 with Covid disrupting any possibility of an international tour, Brooker hit the 2021 pre-season with a renewed drive.
“The coaches told me that they wanted me to become the new threshold for game fitness. So, I thrashed myself,” she says. “I didn’t have enough knowledge to train smart, so I just went out and ran myself into the ground as I thought that’s what they wanted.
“I was the fittest I’d ever been but along the way, I also developed this weird mental ability to ignore pain and biological signs to stop exercising.”
In a fitness test to run a lap of the field, Brooker pushed herself too hard. “I completely blacked out – I finished it and started throwing up and couldn’t breathe."
“I had pushed so hard for so long that I developed post-traumatic vocal cord dysplasia. When my heart rate would get too high, my vocal cords would shut off my airways – in short, my body would force me to stop because I had got my mind to a point where mentally I could push through everything.”
The issue was solved with speech therapy, but Brooker was scared. “I felt like I couldn’t trust my brain to stop me from pushing too hard. It was weighing on my mind when I went into the next Black Ferns tour of England and France.”
Brooker made her starting debut against England in the second test. Twenty minutes in, she chased down an England winger, bent to make the tackle and felt her kneecap shoot up her leg as her patella tendon ruptured.
“I couldn’t slow down so just rolled off the field. There was horrific pain, and I remember looking down at the hole where my knee was supposed to be,” she says. She was taken straight to hospital and underwent surgery.
It was a traumatic experience – under Covid protocols, she had no one there to support her. “The hospital was overrun and I wasn’t allowed to eat or shower until after the surgery, so was still in my rugby kit with no food over 36 hours later,” she says.
With no early spot available in the MIQ facilities back in New Zealand, Brooker flew to France to rejoin the tour. Back at home, she began the slow, painful rehabilitation with her physio, Jen Croker.
“When I was eventually able to start lifting weight, the pain was incredible, I would cry or vomit at every training,” Brooker says. “I was glad I had built that mental strength, but it was touch and go if I was ever going to play again.
“I was just pushing so much. I think Jen didn’t have the heart to tell me that it was unlikely.”
It wasn’t just Brooker’s knee that she needed to heal, but her mind.
“After my injury, I became very socially anxious. My whole identity was tied to becoming a Black Fern ... but when that was suddenly taken away, and I couldn’t walk for two months, I didn’t know who I was.
“I would have panic attacks and couldn’t get out of my car to go to work. If it wasn’t for support from Whitney Hansen [Matatū head coach], Jessie Hansen [Matatū mental skills coach], Jen, and sessions with a psychologist [where] I was able to access through InStep, I don’t think I would have got through that really dark space – they literally saved me by helping me to live the way that I wanted to.”
After 15 months of excruciating rehab, Brooker was selected for the 2023 Matatū squad. Desperate to get back to the field, ongoing pain in her knee continued to dog her every move.
“I never had doubt that I would get back to playing but the pain was intense; after big sessions on the Thursday afternoon, I would end up in tears. When I ran on for the first pre-season match against the Hurricanes Poua, I was cracking a lot of painkillers,” she admits.
“It was becoming clear I’d likely have this pain for the rest of my life. I’ve thrown everything at it – got opinions from specialists and even saw a holistic healer who waved some charcoal over it.”
She’s now on a specialised pain management programme, with a focus on strengthening her deteriorated quad muscle, “and getting my body moving in the way that it’s meant to. I was still on painkillers for the last game of the season, but we won the Aupiki competition that year – that was the best pain relief”.
Despite her chronic pain, Brooker’s impact was noticed and rewarded with another Black Ferns contract. Travelling to Canada for the Pacific Four competition, she got the most time in the black jersey of her career.
In the meantime, former Matatū coach Blair Baxter asked her to join the New Zealand sevens development team in France, before she headed to join her sister Millie in Ireland and Scotland for a working holiday.
While living in Ireland, Brooker figured she should try Gaelic football and absolutely loved it – “although I got pulled up for too much contact at times,” Brooker laughs.
Returning to New Zealand after a six-month rugby stint with the Yokohama TKM club in Japan, Brooker settled back to another Aupiki season this year – still managing her knee pain and hoping for one more shot at the Black Ferns. But by the end of the season, she knew it wasn’t to be.
“I had a pretty cool back-up plan and so a few days after the Aupiki final against the Blues, I headed over to Melbourne,” she says, joining Essendon. “I was so depressed after losing that final – a lot of us had horrible post-campaign blues so it was a good distraction.”
With such brutal injuries behind her, Brooker’s incredible optimism, resilience and dedication to her sport continues to stand out.
“I can’t do my knee again, there’s a wire in there now,” she says. “As for the vocal cords, I’ve got the toolkit to get myself back on track if I need to.
“There are always going to be injuries and any athlete is a bit delusional if they think it won’t happen to them. I’m lucky to have amazing support around me in Australia and back home so there’s no point in being scared, it’s only going to hold me back.
“You always need at least one or two people in your corner – you can’t get through these injuries by yourself. I think it’s important people know it’s possible to get through potential career-ending injuries and achieve your goals. I hope my experience can help someone feel less alone.”
One of Brooker’s biggest lessons has been knowing she’s more than her sport.
“I’m at my best when I’m around my sport and I’m still finding my balance, but it doesn’t define me. Plus, I may as well dig in while I can,” she says.
With no signs of slowing, Brooker will be one to watch in the Essendon Bombers when the AFLW season kicks off on August 14.
This story was originally published at Newsroom.co.nz and is republished with permission.