The 100-cap veteran chasing debut gold

SHE is a veteran of the Hockeyroos, a dual Olympian and has 103 caps to her name, but this will be Mariah Williams’ first Commonwealth Games.

The forward has spent almost as much time battling injury, including one that left her in a wheelchair, in the past decade she has playing hockey.

Her horrifying injury run has robbed her of any chance to compete at the Commonwealth Games.

But this time she is fit and her hunt for an elusive Commonwealth gold on debut is fuelled by being bundled out in the quarter-finals at the Tokyo Olympics.

And when she sets her mind on something, she usually gets it.

Williams, 27, made her Hockeyroos debut as a 17-year-old, and was named the most promising new talent in sport at the Deadly Awards.

But by the time she was 21, she had endured four knee operations.

The first, to repair the meniscus in her right knee, came not long after her national debut. She rejoined the team, only to injure her other knee six months later.

Williams worked hard to be match fit for the 2014 Commonwealth Games and World Cup, but a month out she re-injured her right knee and had to go back under the knife.

In 2015, Williams was back on track and counting down to an Olympic debut at the Rio Games.

Three months out from the Games she injured her left knee again, and again it required surgery.

An expert at rehab, she was match fit five weeks before the Olympics.

Williams even scored a goal in the game against Japan.

Following Rio, Williams again found herself in pain, but it wasn’t her knee.

It took eight months for doctors to diagnose her adductor and pubic synthesis joint injury.

The surgery was brutal, involving having her abdominal muscles cut and her adductor tendon extended.

Williams had to spend two weeks in a wheelchair and another three on an exercise ban.

It took her two years to recover. “After the pubic bone surgery I really had to dig deep,” Williams said. “It was really hard mentally to kind of come back and physically to come back from the injury, but I had to rehab to get my body right.

“In that process I was like, ‘There is no way that a part of me wants to give up now’. I knew I had to get back on the right rack and keep going forward to get back on the international stage. Through the hard work it happened.”

Williams, a proud Wiradjuri woman, was part of the team that was knocked out in the quarter-finals in Tokyo in a 1-0 loss to India – the same point in the competition the Hockeyroos were bundled out at the 2016 Games.

But the game, which the women came so close to winning, still haunts Williams.

“Tokyo is still in the back of everyone’s throat,” she said. “It is something that fuels me to keep pushing hard, day in and day out. I most certainly do not want to be brought down at a quarter-final in a major tournament.”

The loss followed the heartbreaking 4-1 gold-medal match loss to New Zealand at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

Williams, recovering from surgery, was watching the game.

“I watched little snippets of it because I was obviously devastated, but I wanted to watch the girls at the same time,” Williams said.

“It was a mix of feelings watching the final and I’m hoping that for the girls that were there it fuels the fire to want to do better at this year’s Games.”

The Hockeyroos will come up against New Zealand, South Africa, Scotland and Kenya in their pool games in Birmingham.

Matches start on July 29 and the finals are from August 5.