Fremantle skipper Alex Pearce has made a dramatic return to Perth in the wake of his side’s agonising grand final defeat to Brisbane after needing a lift to get off the plane.
Pearce sustained a serious Achilles injury in the third quarter of the seven-point defeat that snatched the club’s maiden premiership from their fingers at the MCG on Saturday.
It was a frightening incident for the defender who was left sprawled on the turf after the ligament appeared to snap while he was chasing the ball on the broadcast wing.
The 31-year-old was on crutches as he delivered a conciliatory speech after the game, but as the forlorn Dockers arrived at Melbourne airport to return to Perth on Sunday morning, he was sporting a moonboot.
To rub salt into the wound, upon arrival in Perth, the Dockers’ inspirational leader needed a cherry-picker type lift to disembark the Virgin jet with his crutches.
It didn’t get much better for Pearce when the team got back to their Cockburn base, needing a drive to take him home with the injured Achilles on his right leg hindering his ability to drive.
The defender and the club face a nervous wait for scans to reveal the extent of the damage, with the worst-case scenario of a full rupture of the ligament potentially wiping Pearce out for at least the next nine months.
Dockers Head of Football Joe Brierty was optimistic on Sunday, suggesting there was scope for good news on the injury.
“It’s obviously pretty sore; we expect that he’s got a partial tear of his Achilles,” Brierty said at Melbourne airport before the Dockers boarded their return flight.
“We’ll get a scan done. If it’s a partial tear, he probably doesn’t need surgery. But look, you never know with these things. Once you get them scanned, it could be worse.
“But at the moment, it looks like we’ll obviously hopefully not have any surgery.
“Normally we would try and get him in pretty quickly (for a scan) to have a look at it, but we’ll just see how the swelling goes, and sometimes that can delay things.”