Holy Moli: Prop keeps low

Atunaisa Moli hasn’t been able to sit through a Super Rugby match this year. It seems strange coming from a one-match All Black, but after being sidelined due to a haematoma in his quad muscle, the Chiefs prop has distanced himself from the sport.

“It was killing me knowing that I wasn’t playing. If I was to watch a game, I’d probably watch only the first half,” Moli, 23, said. “And with the ABs [against France], it was quite hard to watch. But I guess that’s just the way rugby is. There’s a lot of boys who have been in my shoes and they’ve come back all right, so hopefully that happens for me, too.”

After a breakout year for the Chiefs in 2017 saw him earn his first taste of All Blacks rugby, Moli found just how fickle the life of a professional sportsperson can be when his 2018 campaign ended after one 24-minute stint from the bench.

In the Chiefs’ season opener against the Crusaders, he copped a solid knock to his leg. It wasn’t until a few days later that he realised the knock was more than a stinger.

He went to a Hamilton A&E clinic when the injury flared up again two days after the match and was diagnosed with a haematoma. He spent the following two weeks in and out of surgery at Waikato Hospital.

“They had to cut the whole side of my quad to release the pressure of that muscle that was clogging up,” Moli said. “From there on, it was just open, close, open, close.”

A haematoma is a collection of blood outside of the blood vessel, often caused by a solid direct hit to the area. Blood escapes and collects outside of the vessels within a muscle or soft tissue and can form a localised, solid mass below the surface of the skin.

Moli said there was nothing visible in the damaged area to alert him, but the pain was undeniable. After his diagnosis, medical staff ran him through a list of worst-case scenarios of the injury — which included amputation.