Games comeback joy for Ellie after knee injury

WHEN she saw her knee sticking out at a right angle Wales Women’s hockey player Eloise “Ellie” Laity knew her Commonwealth Games were over before they had begun.

Struck down with injury the night before the opening ceremony in 2014, the midfielder, from Penarth, has spent the past four years fighting back to peak fitness.

Fearing she might never return to play the game she loves at the top level Ellie, 23, said she cried when she read the email three weeks ago saying she’d been picked to represent her country again.

As she gets ready to fly out to the Australian Gold Coast with her team tomorrow, the people she said she thanks most are her mum and dad – former Wales international hockey player Joanne and former Wales A and Barbarians rugby player Colin.

“I couldn’t have done it without them. They never pushed me, they just helped me keep it in perspective,” she said. “As any sports person who has been injured knows it is lonely. You go from being in a team to being on your own.”

Ellie had only played hockey for six years when she was picked for the team going to Glasgow but the night before the opening ceremony disaster struck.

“In the last training game against India I slipped really awkwardly and injured my knee. I was gutted. I knew immediately it was serious. It’s called a bucket handle tear. I couldn’t straighten my knee and it was sticking out at a right angle.”

Ellie was taken back to the Commonwealth Village for a scan. Straight away she could see she was going to have to go home.

“Because it happened the day before the opening ceremony they had someone to replace me. You are allowed two reserves but you have to be gone before the opening ceremony for them to come,” she said.

“I was devastated. I had already been through rehab for injuries twice before and knew how hard and lonely it is. I was dropped off at Glasgow Airport in a wheelchair on the Wednesday morning. I could see passengers coming off the plane – it was the Wales netball team and when they saw someone in a Wales kit they all started waving. I was gutted.”

Flying home to Penarth while her teammates joined the opening ceremony, Ellie had surgery two days later. Surgeons stitched the cartilage together and, six days after the injury, Ellie flew back to Glasgow to watch her team compete with another player called up to replace her. It was a bittersweet moment.

“I wanted to go because I had been there in all the build up and it was my team,” she said.

Watching the games with her dad, now deputy head at Westbourne School and mum, a geography teacher at Stanwell School, Ellie feared at times she may never get the chance again.

Her siblings helped her recovery with twin Oliver and younger brother Sam, 21, going out cycling with Ellie which helped her get fit.

In 2015-16, Ellie played with Cambridge City – but her knee began to cause problems again.

The young athlete went back into surgery, trying not to think the worst. Doctors found cartilage floating around and hoovered it out.

By January 2017 she was back in the game and was picked for Wales Women in the World League Round Two in Kuala Lumpur.

She said: “I was not always sure I was going to come back to fitness to play. We fly this Friday. I am so excited. If I hadn’t been picked this time I would always have been thinking ‘What if?.’ I fought for my place and I love my team. I can’t wait.”