The last time Daniel Kerr was fully fit, playing without the mental and physical weight of injury, the AFL landscape in Perth was near unrecognisable to that of today.
It was 2007 and Kerr was one of the game’s outstanding midfielders, coming off the best season of his career. He was part of the most feared centre square combination in the League and his club had set its sights on back-to-back premierships.
Champions Chris Judd and Ben Cousins (who edged out Kerr for the 2005 Brownlow Medal by one vote) were his teammates, while the Eagles’ latest NAB AFL Rising Star nominee, Andrew Gaff, was a 14-year-old Carey Grammar student in Melbourne.
Significantly for a footballer who has played just 37 games since missing the 2007 finals series with a finger injury, the game was played differently then, too.
“Back then there was no such thing really as a zone,” Kerr told the AFL Record recently as he worked through more complications arising from his delicate hamstring surgery last year.
“The pressure when you had the ball was from behind. Now you get the footy and there’s someone in your face straight away. There’s a lot more frontal pressure.”
Changes to how the game is played and the horror of Kerr’s hamstring injury, which he sustained in round four last year and sidelined him for close to 12 months, led many to believe he was finished as a top-line on-baller.
Even West Coast coaches, while confident he would return down the track to be a quality player, had reservations about what the 28-year-old could produce this season.
Their conservative outlook was well founded, particularly in light of his recent three-game spell on the sidelines with hip, hamstring and glute soreness, and two missed matches earlier this year.
But there has also been evidence in Kerr’s 11 games—most notably against Essendon in round seven and Adelaide five weeks later—he could one day soon be close to the footballer he was.
He is reading ruckman Dean Cox’s tap work as well as ever, also forging a strong relationship with Nic Naitanui, and the quick feet and burst of speed out of stoppages is returning slowly.
One thing Kerr has never lost—and he has worked tirelessly to maintain it as his greatest strength—is his cleanness at ground level.
“I was always confident I could still play the game at the top level if my body allowed me to,” he said.
“But I had massive doubts on whether my hamstring would heal in the recovery process and whether I would be able to get back to sprinting and kicking and running long distances.
“I still had faith that if my body could do the work, then I’d be able to perform.”
Read the full story in this week’s edition of the AFL Record, available at all grounds.
