Despite a nightmare of a recovery from his most recent injury, All Blacks Sevens star Andrew Knewstubb has learned to carve away the negativity and instead focus on his life passions.
Knewstubb, with more than 100 games under his belt since his international debut in 2017, is one of those currently on the sidelines – a situation he’s, unfortunately, all too familiar with.
The 27-year-old has suffered two serious ACL injuries to the same knee so far in his career with the most recent being last April in Singapore.
“On my first injury, I had quite serious cartilage damage and once they figured that out it was more a question of am I ever going to be able to play rugby again rather than when,” Knewstubb told 1News.
“That was pretty scary.”
So when it happened a second time, Knewstubb knew what was to come and found the silver linings.
“I must have done something to someone – a bit of karma coming back to get me,” he joked.
“I'm not too sure but I think it's just a bit of bad luck and when my first graph failed that was a bit of bad luck as well. I was the fittest I'd ever been, strongest I'd ever been, both my legs were firing and I was way stronger than I'd ever been before and then one awkward turn and it just happened again.”
Just weeks after his most recent operation, Knewstubb has now hit another hurdle.
“Two weeks and five days after my second operation I started feeling a bit sick and started getting the shakes and stuff like that and then I went in and said, ‘oh, I'm not feeling too good’.
“I thought I had a fever and ended up going to hospital that night and then later on they were like, ‘we're going to have to have another surgery on your knee and clean it out because you've got a wound infection in your knee’.”
The result was eight days in hospital, a third surgery and weeks on a drip to treat the infection.
Needles to say, it’s been an “extremely frustrating” road.
“Sometimes I come home and I can't even walk the dog and stuff like that which is draining physically and mentally as well but something that always brings me back is like, it's actually not that tough – there's single parents out there or there's people that are like picking apples for 12 hours and that's hard, that's hard work so I'm still really lucky and I've got a lot to be extremely grateful for.
“I'm still in the fight for Olympics so I've got a pretty big carrot there in front of me for me to chase.”
As another round of rehabilitation begins, his hobby of whakairo [carving] has taken on a much bigger role.
Growing up on the Kapiti Coast, Knewstubb – of Ngāpuhi decent – was surrounded by Māori carvings.
"It's definitely a happy place for me and it's really helped me out,” he said.
“I've gone through some pretty tough times and then it's quite cool to just go out there… you can go out there and it zeros you out and you can get stuck in and all of a sudden four hours goes by and you think, ‘far, I better come in and do the dishes or something’!”
His carving has become part of his other hobby though with Knewstubb crafting a patu [Māori club] for the All Blacks Sevens every season; each with its own story.
The patu then travels with the team all over the world before being awarded to the best defender.
“Seeing the boys fighting to get it each week and when they get it the amount of pride they have and I'm not saying it's because the patu is unreal but it's more because of what it stands for and what it means and I think that's the most satisfying thing.
“That's what I'm pretty proud of when I see that sort of stuff.”
It won’t be long before Knewstubb is back to contest for it himself with a story in Paris awaiting the team as well.
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