Wounded Bull: Brush with death fails to stop Vaughan charge for Blues
When Paul Vaughan broke his leg in his late teens, and suffered complications from the ensuing surgery, it wasn’t just his career on life support.
Vaughan, carting up the ball as an 18-year-old for the Gungahlin Bulls in Canberra, broke his fibula and tibia while making one of his trademark hit-ups.
What should have been a routine operation resulted in what the Dragons prop described as “a little bit of a complication”. It turned out to be a bit more than that. This is where the Paul Vaughan story almost ended.
“Surgery was pretty tough in that period,” Vaughan said.
“There was a little bit of complication. I had a fat embolism floating up on my lung and it collapsed my lung. I was on life support in the ICU for a couple of days, which was a tough period.
“It was pretty brutal, but I got out of there, lost a lot of weight out of hospital. About 10 kilos. That was the first time that I've been 95 kilos, 98 kilos. [Since then] I've been about 110-116 kilos; that's about the best weight for me to be carrying.”
It was touch and go there for a while. Vaughan's mother, Patricia, a nurse, stayed by his side while he remained on life support.
“It's not common but it does happen,” Vaughan said of his ordeal.
“It was [dangerous]. It was a long time ago and mum was a bit nervous but I've come out the other side obviously.”
Pressed on how close he came to not telling the tale, the former Raiders front-rower, perhaps only half-jokingly, quipped: “Say I've flatlined three times and came back to life.”
History has shown Vaughan has fully recovered and will become the 1000th NSW player to pull on the sky-blue jersey in his Origin debut on Wednesday night.
Having overcome the life-threatening injury, other setbacks – such as being shunted to reserve grade during his stint in the nation’s capital – can now be put fully into perspective.
“There was an instance down in Canberra, the reason why I left was because of the salary cap,” Vaughan recalled.
“I thought I was playing good football down in Canberra but that's just what happens. I was getting forced out there and had to play a couple of games through reserve grade, but that happens. There's a lot of players that go through their careers that have to play reserve grade at one point.
“I knew that I was a first-grader. I knew I had a lot to prove. I went to Saints, did that, cemented that and it's just gone up from there.”
Vaughan started his career in the back line – “I was tall and skinny” – but put on plenty of bulk while recovering from the operation in hospital. He is now tasked with laying the platform required for NSW to take advantage of their speed men out wide.
It is all possible after he cemented himself as one of the game’s premier props since making the switch to the Red V.
“Moving up to Saints was probably the best thing I've done in my career,” he said.
“It's excelled my career, my football has come on in leaps and bounds and now I'm playing Origin, which is the coolest thing that I've been a part of.
“You do look back on your career and where you’ve come from, and know where you are.”