LONDON, 15 Oct - When Bernard Foley continues his dreamlike World Cup adventures for the Wallabies in the quarter-final on Sunday, his number one fan, dad Michael, will be in the Twickenham stands cheering him on. He never misses a match, if he can help it.
Indeed, Michael has always been so keen to support his lad that he once even sneaked out of hospital after open heart surgery to go and watch him play. It was a good job he did - because Bernard might not have been around to tell the remarkable tale he outlined at the team hotel on Wednesday.
The nightmarish drama unfolded back when Bernard, one of the stars of this World Cup, was a promising all-round sportsman ready to play a big under-14 club game for Sydney team Redfield College.
“Dad was in hospital at the time. He’s been at virtually every game I’d ever played and he used to coach me but he’d just had open heart surgery for a leakage and the hospital wouldn’t allow him to be released for the day. So he made mum sneak him out of the hospital and he came to watch me," Bernard recalls.
“During the game, though, I got a kick in the side. I didn’t think much of it, I was just a bit winded but then I started feeling pretty ill. Then, when they were dropping dad back at the hospital after the game, they said ‘why don’t you drop in as well and get yourself checked out?’”
Frightening time
That is how Michael’s unauthorised day out turned into a potential life saver for Bernard. “Because when they did all the scans, they found out that I had a rupture in my kidney,” he recalls. “They said 'can you give us a urine sample' and it came out bright red. It was pretty frightening at the time.”
If it had not been for Michael having to go back to the hospital, Bernard may have instead just headed back home and rested, which could have had disastrous consequences as he was suffering internal bleeding.
As it was, the laceration to the kidney was so serious that there were initially fears that he might not play again. “I then had to spend 12 months out of contact sports and off the rugby pitch. But such is life, I suppose,” he shrugs.
Not that there was ever much chance of keeping young Foley away from a sports field. His appetite for rugby only increased while his mum fretted about him returning. “I grew up playing every sport at some stage; I’d have sport on seven nights a week, to my mum and sisters’ disgust as they had to run me around,” he laughs.
Not weak at all
It was evidently worth all the family’s efforts as Foley’s star has soared in the game, particularly since the start of this tournament which he had begun amid whispers that he could be a weak link because his kicking was not assured enough and his attacking prowess was not of the same quality as his more mercurial teammate Quade Cooper.
On the contrary, he has turned out to be brilliant, so metronomic with the boot and incisive in creation and execution of Wallabies’ attacks that there is now no question about who owns the Australia number 10 shirt.
Yet the 26-year-old still believes he owes much to working alongside Cooper. “Quade is such a quality player who likes to play a bit ad lib. He’ll keep you guessing, he’ll try his hand, and that’s why he’s been such a world-class fly-half and I think my game has definitely grown a lot being alongside a bloke like him.
“It hasn’t been a battle directly; it’s definitely been a relationship where we’ve been working together and bouncing ideas off each other.”
No keeping him down
On Sunday, Foley, who has missed only two of 19 kicks at goal during the tournament, aims to continue his scintillating form against the Scots with his parents and one of his five siblings all in attendance.
“My dad never played high-level rugby but he’s always loved it and played a bit,” Foley smiled. “You can’t keep him down!”
RNS ic/js/ej