It was always such a relief getting back to Australia. The minute those Qantas jets land after long stints overseas, I’m that person who just wants to clap and cheer really loudly. There’d be times when I was playing overseas and we’d land in an airport, on another airline, and I’d see a Qantas jet coming in or leaving and it always made me so sad, because all I wanted was to be on it, going home.
Being home with my parents was just the sweetest thing in the world, Mum’s cooking, wine by the ocean with my dad at their house on the South Coast where they’d retired a few years before. I dreamt of those things when I was homesick in every corner of the globe. I’d decided I wasn’t going to play overseas anymore, apart from in Seattle, which was like my other home, but I’d already committed to staying with the Opals in 2012 for the lead-up to the London Olympics, and I would miss the first 19 games of the WNBA season.
When my other hip went in Spain, I knew straight away. I’d managed to get through that entire season with my left hip, which was even starting to feel a little better, but my Achilles was still playing up, and then in that last game I felt my right hip go, but wasn’t sure if it was the same type of injury as the other hip, or if I had just strained my groin muscle.
I had two weeks to get back for the Opals’ training camp in Canberra, and then we had a tour to Europe. My hip was on my mind and aching. I met up with the Opals girls in Canberra for the beginning of our Olympic campaign, and I remember thinking that I’d just had two weeks off, I should be ready to go.
In my first training session at the Opals camp, I was again in pain, and I didn’t realise it at the time but I’d torn my right psoas muscle, a long muscle running from the lumbar region into the lower pelvis. This was already shaping up to be a long few months, but my mentality was, ‘Just get through it, once the Olympics are over, you can sort it all out’.
We headed to the training camp in the Czech Republic leading up to London. The Olympics were a matter of weeks away. I was in pain in so many different areas of my body, but I wanted to play, it was the Olympic Games!
When we came back to Australia, I had a scan in Melbourne and that’s when they found I’d torn my right psoas muscle, as well as the labral tear in my right hip from the last game of the Spanish season. I was given a cortisone injection into the labrum to try and relieve the pain. The Opals had a tournament in Australia against Brazil and I was kept off the court for the first of three matches as a precaution, as well as having lighter training sessions. I could have played through that first match if I had to, but that would have been counterproductive to the main goal, the Olympic Games, so we decided to get it right instead of pushing through it. I sat on the bench and watched the Opals beat the Brazilians 85–64.
I played the next two matches against Brazil and we won, with Kristi Harrower achieving her 200th game for the Opals in the match played in Bendigo. Liz Cambage had been number two draft in the WNBA the previous year and was preparing for her first Olympics, and she played well. We won all three games, a good result for the Opals, and the most pleasing thing for me as captain was to see that the team improved at each game, finding the combinations and chemistry we needed as a team. We had a strong preparation, we had spent more time together as a team preparing for this Olympics than we had for any other that I’d been involved in, except maybe Sydney.
It was back to the European training facility. I don’t know if you’ve been on planes for long periods of time and had your leg go dead, numb—well, I’d been getting that in my right leg to some degree for quite a long time, probably 15 years or so, but then one day it started happening all the time. I began training, but I think because of my hip injury it led to my hamstring playing up, it felt like I’d turned 30 and my body was caving in. My body was seriously shutting down, I’d been going for a long time without a break from play, and even if I did have a bit of a break because of an injury, I was still constantly rehabbing to make sure I came back in relatively good shape. I’d taken the Spanish contract because I’d decided to build my dream home in Albury, and I was trying to pay it off, I felt like I had to reconcile everything. I was willing to do anything to get it all paid for, and instead I was paying the price, as my body steadily deteriorated, one injury leading to another.
My last stop before the Games was a couple of tournaments in England and France, playing against Great Britain, France and Angola. With my ongoing hamstring and hip injuries, I went ahead of the team to the athletes’ village in London. The rest of the team had taken the Eurostar across the English Channel to France, where they played Brazil, China and our hosts, France. After defeating China and narrowly beating Brazil, the Opals lost to France 64–58. We were all still feeling confident going into the Olympics, but the French team were getting very strong.
The three silver medals I’d won at the last three Olympics were fantastic, hard-earned achievements, medals I cherished at the time and still do. The thought of winning gold was always our over-arching goal, but we had to take it one game at a time because, more often than not in sport, if you look too far ahead you are bound to be upset.