‘Physically, she’s great’: Kelly back at training after ‘traumatic’ injury

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Sky Blues co-captain Isabelle Kelly returned to NSW Blues training on Thursday, two weeks after she was helped from the field coughing up blood in game one of the Women’s State of Origin series.

Kelly was rushed to ICU at Westmead hospital after copping a forearm to the throat from Queenslander Julia Robinson just before half-time in the Sky Blues’ 18-10 loss at CommBank Stadium.

Coach Kylie Hilder allayed fears about Kelly’s physical fitness when she named her in her 17-player squad last week for game two in Townsville, but said there were mental barriers Kelly still needed to overcome.

“Good news on Izzy, she got the all clear yesterday from the specialist, so she will be right to go,” Hilder said.

“Obviously, she’s still got a bit of a mental battle herself to get through. It was quite a traumatic experience for her. So we’ll work with her during the week to make sure she’s mentally ready to go. But physically, she’s great.”

“It’s going to be just making sure that she’s comfortable with everything that’s going on. She has done some contact, so that’s a bonus and a plus, and it’s just making sure that what we do she’s ready to go, but she is an athlete and pretty experienced now, so she knows how to look after herself.”

Isabelle Kelly at Blues training on Thursday.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

Kelly returned to contact training earlier this week with her NRLW team, the Sydney Roosters, and Hilder said she would be training as per normal with the rest of the team.

“Absolutely, and that’s the way she wants to be treated, so that’s how we’ll go with it. It was a pretty traumatic experience, and we’re well aware of that. We won’t push her, we’ll just let her come in when she feels.”

Kelly wasn’t available for comment at the Sky Blues media session on Thursday morning, but co-captain Kezie Apps said it had been a distressing experience for both Kelly and the team.

“It did rattle all of us girls, obviously, seeing how distressed she [Kelly] was,” Apps said. “Then for the referee not to stop, and us saying, ‘You’ve got to stop’, but he just kept playing on and. obviously, they scored off the back of it.

Isabelle Kelly leaves the field in game one after suffering a throat injury.Credit: Getty

“It was very distressing to see Izzy in so much pain, and for us, obviously wanting to go help her, but we couldn’t because the game didn’t stop at all. Izzy is such a massive part of this team and we did really miss her when she was gone.”

The Sky Blues need to win game two on Thursday, June 22 by at least nine points to retain the series.

“If we can fix up our errors from our game, points will come and we won’t have to worry too much about that,” Apps said.

“Especially defensively for us, we need to be a lot better. So I think if we just focus on ourselves and get the errors out and play our style of footy, then the results should speak for themselves.”

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