"About myself, what I've learnt the most is just to enjoy life. "I sit back now and look at the little things in life and am amazed how people can go through life and not appreciate what they've got." McKinnon was reflecting on his recovery and rehabilitation from a broken neck. He suffered two fractured vertebrae when driven head-first into the ground in a three-man tackle in the final seconds of the first half of Newcastle's 28-20 loss to the Storm on March 24 last year. His teammates, opponents, the crowd of more than 11,000, and countless thousands more watching on television held their breath as McKinnon, wearing a neck brace and unable to feel his legs, was carefully carried from the field on a stretcher and rushed to hospital for an emergency anterior cervical fusion and discectomy at the C4-C5 level. In a statement the next day, the Knights confirmed what everyone feared but had been terrified to admit, that McKinnon had suffered a "devastating spinal injury".

Doctors explained "regeneration and recovery could be up to two years". McKinnon spent four weeks in intensive care at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne before being transferred to a spinal rehabilitation ward at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital, where he learned how to control an electronic wheelchair. Newcastle players dedicated their season to their stricken teammate, wearing his club number 232 embroidered on the front of their playing strip. The No.16 jersey he wore in his 49th and final NRL game was retired for the rest of the season. I don't think anybody has done anything in their life to wish this upon them, but you can only deal with the cards you've got, and that's what I'm trying to do. The rugby league community responded with the "Rise For Alex" campaign, culminating in a full round of matches in July to help raise funds to cover his medical costs.

Flanked by his former coach, Wayne Bennett, and several Knights team-mates at the launch of the "Rise For Alex round" at a media conference at ANZ Stadium, McKinnon said: "I don't see myself as inspirational. I'm just trying to get back to how I was. "If anyone is inspirational it's the people who are around me that really help me a lot and have made it really easy for me." McKinnon's treatment continued at the Royal Rehab centre in Ryde, then in October he relocated to the Gold Coast to begin an intensive program at the NeuroPhysics Functional Performance Centre. His fiancee, Teigan Power, who inspires him to walk again so he can walk her down the aisle on their wedding day, has never left his side. They returned to Newcastle at the end of January and, in and around his physiotherapy sessions, he works in the Knights football department and in a corporate role.

"I don't know whether I've come to peace. I reckon every day I ask myself the same thing," McKinnon told KO-FM when asked if he had accepted the hand fate has dealt him. "I don't go through a day where I'm in a consistent mood whether I'm happy or sad or angry. I've got no reason why something like that would happen to somebody or anybody. "I don't think anybody has done anything in their life to wish this upon them, but you can only deal with the cards you've got, and that's what I'm trying to do." McKinnon is determined to walk again and Bennett, the coach who recruited him to Newcastle after they first crossed paths at the Dragons, is backing him in. Bennett, who described the 23-year-old Aberdeen Tigers junior as one of his favourites, told The Footy Show last July that he bore the burden of the injury "every day".

"It was probably the most upsetting thing other than my own children – a couple of things that have happened in my own life – that I have gone through," Bennett said. "To see his parents [Scott and Kate] go in that room and, being a parent, understanding their grief and shock. I have shed a lot of tears since about him. I suppose I will shed some more. I feel it every day; still do. It won't go away. I don't want it to go away." In one of his last duties at the Knights, Bennett gave McKinnon his coach's award – an honour shared with close mate Beau Scott – at the club's presentation last October. "There is a great line that says, 'You can only play with the cards you've been dealt', and he got dealt a couple of dud cards and that happens in life," Bennett said. "He had no control over the situation, but the reality was it was life-changing. I admired him as much as I've admired anyone in my life the way he has handled the situation he has been handed, the cards he's been dealt. "I was proud of him before the incident – I always thought he was special from the time I first met him at the Dragons – but I've never been more proud of him now because he's made our job so much easier because of the way that he has conducted himself."

After two years in the Junior Kangaroos and NSW under-20s, McKinnon represented Country Origin in 2013. He would have almost certainly played for NSW and Australia and would have played more than 200 NRL games, and Bennett touted him as a future Knights captain. Long since accepting that he will never play again, McKinnon still misses it. "It's hard. I love football, always have, and I've been around it since I was about two years old," he told KO-FM. "It's a passion that I'll always have, and it's a struggle sometimes watching it, to tell you the truth. I want to watch it, but then I don't, then I get disappointed. "I'm a very ambitious type of person that wanted to achieve a lot of goals in rugby league and I didn't get to do that.

"I suppose over time I'll get better with a lot of things like that, but I do enjoy being around the boys and I do enjoy seeing them win, because I know exactly what that feeling's like, so I only wish nothing but the best for the boys and hopefully they have a really good year." The Newcastle Herald