NATHAN Vardy knows all too well how to deal with it.

For someone five seasons into his AFL career, he’s spent just about as much time on the sidelines as he has on the field.

He’s already come within a whisker of having to wave goodbye to his dream, without really even getting into it.

Depending on how you look at it, the 23-year-old is either very lucky, or very unlucky.

Lucky that the cartilage in his hip hung on for dear life after being sheared by bone spurs when it jammed up after an awkward landing.

“The cartilage just stayed attached. If it had have come off I would have been done.”

Unlucky that he has to keep jumping so many hurdles to be able to show why he’s such a highly-touted prospect.

When the hip problem was finally behind him, and he’d strung together some games at the back end of 2013, his right knee went pop. Literally.

media_camera When fit, Nathan Vardy proved himself an athletic contributor to the Cats.

Another year to wait, still stuck on 21 senior games.

“It’s frustrating. You’d love it to be a fairytale, like a Mark Blicavs fairytale, who’s been here going on his third year and he’s played nearly 50 games,” Vardy said.

“Some guys have that, some guys don’t. I got drafted with Mitch Duncan and he’s played 100 games.

“You’d love it to have gone that way but the way I see it, Corey Enright had his injury problems when he first got to the club and he’s probably going to play 300 games now.

“I’m not saying I’m going to get to that, obviously I’ve missed a bit more footy than he has but having the injuries gives me the chance to get other parts of my body right, so I’ll be stronger and hopefully more rounded as an athlete so I can be injury-free for the rest of my career.”

The latest setback came on a summer Saturday morning, in a big training session a week and a half after the Cats’ opening pre-season clash.

“I just remember Mark Blicavs kicked it into the 50 and I was on Tom Lonergan, I just ran for the ball, just a marking contest and I landed a little bit badly,” Vardy said.

“Straight away I heard a pop that a lot of people have spoken about when they’ve done their ACLs. It clicked in my head before I’d even hit the ground that I’ve done my ACL.

“It was excruciating pain to start off with and then about a couple of minutes later there was nothing, I just laid there.

media_camera Nathan Vardy has had more than his fair share of injury woes.

“The physios came and assessed it and they didn’t say anything to me when I was out there, they took me inside and I put some ice on it, then I just asked the question ‘what do you think?’ and they said ‘we can’t feel your ACL mate, but we’ll get scans this afternoon to confirm it’.”

That confirmation came that afternoon, writing off another season before it had even started.

It was a devastating blow for both Vardy and Geelong.

The Cats had moved James Podsiadly on at the end of the previous season, keen to give time and games to the next generation of stars.

Vardy had been central to those plans, being groomed in the number two key forward post beside Tom Hawkins.

“That’s what I’d been told by the club — that they saw me as one of the replacements for Pods,” Vardy said.

“Obviously there were a few guys they thought could go through there, and I was training as a key forward, I spent a lot of time with Hawk, just developing a different role because I’d played more as a ruckman the year before.

“To be able to get a full pre-season in as well, I was looking forward to having a good year and going from there and for it to happen that close to the year, it sucked.

“I had a cry once I got into the rooms, because straight away in my head I thought ‘I’ve done this’ and then especially when they said they couldn’t feel the ACL. I got my cry out of the way then.”

That night, among the messages from teammates and friends, Harry Taylor sent him a text to reminding him to keep his chin up.

“He just said, ‘mate, I know it’s a bad thing, but there’s always someone worse off, so just keep positive and you’ll be fine.’,” Vardy said.

“I just wrote back to him ‘I’ve done it before, I’ve had a year off before, I can do it again’.

“You get your head around what you have to do when you’re in rehab and what it feels like to in there as well.

“It’s not great and you don’t want to do it again but you just understand it a little bit more once you’ve done it before, and you know what’s asked of you, so it’s a little bit easier to get through the days.”

Vardy recovery was broken up by an extended trip through a European summer — “a mental battle as well as physical”.

“Because I had the seven weeks I am a bit behind where I would be if I had have just done the rehab through, because it was just seven weeks mental holiday time,” he said.

“But I think having that break, it made the season a lot easier to get through.

“The start of the rehab was probably easier to deal with because I knew I was going to Europe, so I was doing a lot of upper body weights to get the rig looking good to go overseas.

“So I had something to look forward to, and it was probably once I got back ... I was just watching the boys finish out the year, that was probably the hardest bit.”

Throughout his recovery Vardy has had Daniel Menzel by his side, who knows more about knee reconstructions than any player before.

Menzel’s been there with comforting reassurances whenever Vardy’s been uncertain about his progress.

“I’ve had someone to turn to when I’ve had things going on or I need some advice just on how the knee feels because he’s been through it a number of times,” Vardy said.

“I would say ‘my knee feels like this today, did yours ever feel like that?’ and he’d say ‘yeah, I got that heaps’ and I’d feel like that’s just normal, because you do worry, you wake up one morning and it’s a lot sorer than it was the day before and you want to know if you’ve done something to it or if that’s normal.

“So I’ve been able to say things to Menz and he’s been reassuring in that way.”

media_camera Nathan Vardy is hoping for a change of luck in 2015.

The pair was drafted together with Mitch Duncan, the now departed Allen Christensen and Josh Cowan at the end of 2009, in a group full of talent that has largely been cut down by injury.

When Duncan played his 100th game in this year’s semi-final against North Melbourne, the other four had played just 110 between them.

“I think he’s the only one that’s got a good run at it, even Bundy had his injury problems. It’s been pretty frustrating for the other four of us,” Vardy said.

Vardy is aiming to be back in the main training group by the end of January, with a return to playing at some time in April.

He’s confident he’s on top of the hip issues that have plagued him in recent time, and doesn’t worry that his body just simply can’t cope with the rigours of AFL football.

“The injuries I have had, have been freak accidents. They haven’t been because my body won’t stand up, like I keep doing a hamstring or something like that,” he said.

“They’ve been two big injuries that have done the damage. I think my body should be fine in that respect so I haven’t really worried too much about that.”

The hip might be continual management, but he says it’s nothing other players haven’t done before.

“It’s how most things are. Joel Selwood got drafted with a knee problem and he’s managed that all his career, and it goes to show that it can be managed and you can play, because look at him, he’s played 180 games,” Vardy said.

“It’s going to be one of those things but if I keep on top of it should be a thing of the past.

“I keep doing my, what they call ‘pre-hab’ now, you just keep doing the exercises so nothing else happens to it.

“I’ve had no problems with my hip, it was a bit sore two pre-seasons ago and I missed the first few rounds of the year but I haven’t had any problem with that since.”

As for how Vardy will fit into the mix once he returns, even the man himself is unsure.

media_camera Nathan Vardy takes a strong mark.

The Cats added Mitch Clark and Rhys Stanley in the post-season trade and free agency periods, bringing in two more players that, like Vardy, can play forward and ruck.

“There’s Hamish McIntosh and Dawson Simpson as well, and it’s just going to make competition for spots, which is healthy,” Vardy said.

“I like to think I’d be a ruckman/forward, whether it’s more in the ruck, whether it’s more forward, who knows.

“It’s funny, when a couple of big guys get brought in everyone’s like ‘where’s everyone going to play?’ because you’ve got Josh Walker and Shane Kersten as well.

“But these things have a funny way of working themselves out. A lot of the guys, like Hamish, Daws, myself, Mitch as well, have had injury problems, so who’s to say we’re all going to be on the park at the same time? If everyone’s healthy, it’ll be interesting to see who gets the gig and in what position.

“I think I was probably just going to do a little bit (of rucking last season) but it wasn’t going to be anywhere as much, it was going to be more a forward, try and be that key forward with Hawk.

“It’ll probably change a little bit, because I think Hamish will finish up next year and then one of us might have to go into the ruck at some stage.”

Whenever he does return, and to whatever position on the ground, Vardy says Geelong will have a more mature and resilient footballer on their hands, having endured so much in just a few years.

“I’m definitely mentally stronger, but I think it made me grow up a lot,” he said.

“Even with the hip, it happened at the end of my second year and I was a pretty happy-go-lucky guy, just play footy, took footy for granted a little bit.

“So to have the injuries, I respect the game a lot more and respect the lows of football.

“Everyone loves the highs and everyone sees the highs but the lows are the ones that no one really talks about or gets to see.

“So to experience some of them is going to make me enjoy the highs a lot more when they happen.”