Pongracic ponders

By Paul Pickering
AT age 15, Jason Pongracic wondered whether his best footy was behind him.
The Devon Meadows teenager’s stocks were on the rise last June as he prepared to lead the Vic Metro under-15 schoolboy side to the national titles in Queensland.
A broken leg ended that dream and his season on 14 June, when he left the field late in a game after kicking nine goals.
One year to the day later, Pongracic found out he’d been picked in the Vic Country squad for the AFL Under-16 Championships, which begin in western Sydney this weekend.
As Pongracic, now 16, explained this week, the news was a welcome end to 12 months of uncertainty.
“I actually split the growth plate off the bone under the knee, so it was an unusual injury and a lot of doctors and specialists hadn’t seen many of those cases before,” he said.
“I had a few doubts that I could ever get back to playing as well as I could before my leg injury.
“From where I came from, I was pretty rapt to come back and make the (Vic Country) squad.”
The first big step in Pongracic’s recovery was to secure a spot in the Dandenong Stingrays’ pre-season training squad.
Stingrays officials had their own doubts and initially left the talented teenager out, but Pongracic requested another chance to prove his fitness.
Stingrays development manager Mark Wheeler put him through his paces in a series of gruelling tests, which Pongracic describes as “one of the hardest I’ve done”.
“He came out and did about two minutes with me and realised he had a bit of work to do,” Wheeler recalled.
He passed of course, and, having eased his way back into form with his home club, Kooweerup, in the Ellinbank and District league, went on to star across half-forward in the Vic Country under-16 trials games earlier this year.
“He’s done great with his rehab program – we couldn’t have asked for anything better,” Wheeler said.
Pongracic, who has also represented his state in cricket, is among 10 Stingrays who will pull on the big V in western Sydney this week.
Vic Country will begin its under-16 title defence against Western Australia on Saturday.