MAX KING has broken down again and must be fearing his body will never stand up to the rigours of the game again. But many have been in his shoes and made it back to win premierships and emerge as stars again, including dual Coleman medallist Charlie Curnow Essendon champion James Hird.

King, 25, hasn't played for St Kilda since round 16, 2024, and won't play at any level for up to six weeks after straining his hamstring in just his second game back in the VFL on Saturday, following more than 18 months on the sidelines due to an array of knee operations. 

After kicking 52 goals in a breakout campaign in 2022, King has played only 23 of the 77 games Ross Lyon has coached since returning to the Saints for a second stint at the helm. 

First King missed the first half of 2023 due to a shoulder reconstruction. Then his 2024 campaign ended in July after tearing his posterior cruciate ligament in his left knee, before an anterior cruciate ligament scare the following pre-season delayed his start to 2025. Then there was a medial ligament concern last July and more surgery in December and earlier this year.

All that after King ruptured his ACL in his draft year before St Kilda selected him with pick No.4 in the 2018 draft. While Nick Blakey and Connor Rozee are the first two from that draft class to eclipse 150 games – and James Rowbottom and Zak Butters are only a few away – King has played 83 games and been stranded on that figure for almost two years. 

Before Curnow kicked the most goals in the AFL in 2022 and 2023 to earn back-to-back All-Australian blazers, he didn't play a game for over two years and managed only 15 appearances across three seasons due to chronic knee injuries. 

Hird was once in a similar position, where his career hung in the balance for years. After sharing the 1996 Brownlow Medal with Michael Voss, Hird played only seven games the following year and just 22 across the next three seasons due to a lingering navicular injury. His career was at the crossroads at the age of 24, 25 and 26.

"I think when I broke down in '99 – my foot broke in round one of '99 and then I tried to play round two and then couldn't get through the game – I genuinely thought I had only one more chance; and that was the operation the last time," Hird told AFL.com.au on Monday.

"So there was definitely doubt in my head whether I'd come back after that, because three years of really not playing, I might have played, but I couldn't rely on my body, is a long time not to play, so I was genuinely worried then. That's mentally challenging for a young person when that's all you know and footy is such an important part of your life, it's very hard to deal with."

But Hird did make it back. After the Bombers opted against bringing him back for the 1999 preliminary final against Carlton, Hird returned in round one of 2000 after a full pre-season and within a month returned to his best, playing in 20 games for 20 wins that year, where he solidified his status as a modern day great by winning a Norm Smith Medal in the Grand Final win over Melbourne after becoming an All-Australian for the third time. 

"That was huge. It was just relief I think, relief that my body had held up, relief that I was able to perform and that I was able to be part of a team again. I think that the element you miss when you're in rehab is just that team orientation to do things together with your teammates," he said.

"You're at the club, you go training, but you don't actually participate in the team-based stuff. I imagine for Max, that'd be one of those difficult things; he is on his own all the time, really, because you never really join in, even when you're doing the warm-up.

"I remember one of the most exciting things for me in 2000 was when I actually did the little warm-up with the team during pre-season, because even that I hadn't done that for such a long time. They're the really satisfying things. I think Grand Final day, when you stand there at the end of it and push pieces all together, you take a deep breath and a sense of relief that you got through."

Hird and King's injuries are different and the Essendon legend points out he doesn't have any idea what the luckless Saint is enduring, but he believes it doesn't take long to regain confidence once you string games together again.

"We took the long-term view from July '99 to be ready for 2000 and have my body in a condition where it could handle the rigours of a season, not just be able to play two or three games and get injured. So I have absolutely no idea what Max is going through with his injuries and I don't want to comment on that, but it feels like if you continually just try and play the next game and not get your body in condition for year after year of football, it's very hard," he said.

"And as the gurus say: injuries lead to injuries and the more you get injured the more susceptible you are to other injuries. You've got to really have that mentality of conditioning your body. So for me, once I'd sort of played half of the year in 2000, I felt entirely confident with my body again, and was confident I could play well, but it does take a lot of time mentally to think about playing well rather than getting through."

Hird played another 165 games after the dreaded navicular issues stalled his career in 1997 and led to a spate of soft tissue issues. He was named All-Australian three more times and won two more best and fairests. 

Renowned high performance coach John Quinn, who led the Bombers' fitness program for a decade and then joined Greater Western Sydney around stints with the Australian Athletics team, tailored a program that helped save Hird's career.

"It was 'Quinny' really just putting in a program where I was progressively getting my body to adapt to the loads. I dropped a bit of weight, like I was probably 92 or 93kg when I was playing before that and dropped to about 87 so dropping four or five kilos so that I wasn't carrying as much load – that was important," he said.

"But it was generally John Quinn, conditioning my body for the rest of my career, not just for the next six weeks. And so that was definitely an individualised program. Very rarely trained on the track for more than 30-40 minutes for a year. Never trained two days in a row, did most of my training in the pool, pool running, rather than out the track, and then a lot of craft and stationary skills rather than actual normal footy training. So it was a very, very individualised program. John came from an athletics background where you emphasise speed and power, rather than long endurance, which, because you said you're not going to be able to play for 120 minutes, you probably can play for 80 minutes again.”

While Hird is one of the more famous cases this century, there have been plenty of other examples. Nick Malceski underwent two knee reconstructions in three years before returning to play a crucial role in Sydney's 2012 premiership. David Swallow wasn't expected to get to 100 games due to degenerative issues with his knees, but reached 249 before retiring last year. Jaeger O'Meara was in an almost identical spot at the same time and has gone past 200 games now. 

Curnow has played 99 games since returning from the wilderness for the final four games in 2021. Time will tell if King can rise again, just like Curnow has after career-threatening knee injuries.