Ryan Papenhuyzen believes he has failed the Melbourne Storm in recent years. He loathes the feeling.
The shame of missing so many games due to significant injury reminds him of one of the lowest points in his life. When he was in high school, Rachel, his mother, was diagnosed with breast cancer.
For a short while, Papenhuyzen worried his mother might die.
“A lot of people’s drive comes from experiences when they were younger; that fear of failure, and not wanting to be a disappointment,” Papenhuyzen says.
“For me, it goes back to me growing up. I was a bit of a ratbag before year 9, then Mum got really sick, she got breast cancer, and that was my first realisation of, am I being an embarrassment of a child to her?
“I was a bit rude, a bit of a pest, and I didn’t put the time and effort into school. But it kicked me into gear when Mum got sick.
“She went through chemo, and at the time I didn’t know how long she had left. It was awful to see her go through the chemo. It brought us closer as a family.
“I wanted to make her proud and not think I was wasting my potential.
“Mum’s main message was to ‘be a nice human’. When I left the house every day, Mom would say, ‘Do a kind thing for someone today.’ That has always been her mindset.
“The cancer returned a few years later when I was in Melbourne, but she has been OK for a few years now.
“I don’t want to disgrace or disappoint anyone; that has always motivated me, and it continues to do so with the Storm.
“I feel like I’ve let the club down the last couple of years.”
Papenhuyzen won the Clive Churchill Medal in 2020, and was in the NSW State of Origin squad when the interstate series was played at the end of that year due to COVID. He would have been handy for game three at Suncorp Stadium after James Tedesco was knocked out early, but didn’t get a start.
Papenhuyzen had the world at his feet as 2021 rolled around.
But then things started to go wrong. Badly wrong.
He suffered a serious concussion in a sickening incident in Magic Round of that season, which kept him out for 10 weeks, then shattered a knee cap against the Raiders in 2022 and missed more than a year of football. After months of agonising rehabilitation, he made it back onto the field in round 26 last year as part of a three-game cameo, which ended with a bone sticking out of his right ankle against the Broncos in the first week of the finals.
It was an injury that echoed around the league world, such is Papenhuyzen’s popularity.
