Elbow injury comes good Justin time
COWBOYS centre Justin O’Neill felt sick as he clutched his dislocated elbow, fearing his season was over.
Twisted awkwardly in a tackle against Melbourne in Round 23, the 26- year- old looked long odds of being sighted again in 2017.
But thanks to his teammates who continue to defy the odds, plus a smidgen of help from the Dragons, O’Neill is back where he belongs.
Having missed the past five weeks, O’Neill played strongly in Saturday’s 24- 16 win over Parramatta, which booked the Cowboys a preliminary final date with the Roosters, again in Sydney.
“I’ve had more painful injuries, the fractured back was a lot more painful than that,” he said. “It was more a sickening injury. I felt pretty sick walking off the field after they popped it back in.”
O’Neill was already starting to accept this year had been cut short. But two weeks into the recovery process, he found a sliver of hope.
“My initial thoughts after the swelling came down was it looked pretty bad. I probably thought my season was over,” O’Neill said. “But two weeks in, it felt really good and the strength was there, I was surprised by the function I was getting. That gave me a bit of hope and I soon realised I was a chance of playing again.
“The physios assured me players can come back from this if you do the right things.”
Injuries have forced the Cowboys to use 32 players this season, but the fringe players have managed to step up and keep the side in the fight.
“Full credit to ( O’Neill’s replacement) Javid Bowen, he’s part of the reason the boys have been able to come this far,” O’Neill said. “They really fought hard the last few games, we were the underdogs and people were backing us out.”
Despite pulling two backsto-the- wall wins in Sydney, the Cowboys will again be rank outsiders when they take on the Roosters in Saturday’s preliminary final at Allianz.
The Cowboys have been galvanised by the challenge of making their detractors look foolish and skipper Gavin Cooper is confident they can ride the momentum.
“It’s going to be tough,” he said. “We only played them five weeks ago. For half a game of footy we were pretty good.
“In the second half they blew us off the park.”