Brisbane Broncos outside back Deine Mariner has returned to the field, but earlier this year, his career faced a serious threat due to a severe compartment syndrome injury to his leg.
Emergency surgery was crucial to preserve his leg, and the timeline for his return was uncertain, raising concerns about his future mobility when the injury was first identified.
Recently, the Broncos released an eight-minute mini documentary detailing Mariner's journey back to football, featuring insights from Mariner himself, his roommate Xavier Willison, and team doctor Matthew Hislop.
In the documentary, Willison recounts alerting the Broncos medical team early one morning, noting that Mariner could not lie down to sleep and was instead propped against the hotel room wall.
Hislop emphasized that the injury is a genuine medical emergency, explaining that failure to address it could have left Mariner with a permanently unusable leg.
"It's one of the true few medical emergencies that we see in sports med," Hislop remarked.
"Effectively, you've got like six hours before that muscle dies, and that is an irreversible process," he emphasized.
Hislop further elaborated, "With compartment syndrome, there has been bleeding deep in the muscle and it can't escape. Over time, the pressure builds up and gets so high that you can't get more blood and oxygen into the muscle."
"The staff at the RPA were amazing. They got him in, got him stable, confirmed the diagnosis and the theatre was organised and he was taken up and operated on," Hislop concluded.