Alexander the great survivor
Aussie prop making the most of epic journey from death’s door to stardom
Australia's Ben Alexander leaves a press conference ahead of Ireland's clash against Australia on Sunday
Ben Alexander is 25 today. Happy birthday? Hell, every day is a happy day when you listen to his story. Sometimes you don't know what you've got until it starts to slip agonisingly from your grasp.
The Australian behemoth bruiser in the front-row knows this only too well, after the brush with death which forced him into a Damascene conversion that would utterly transform his approach to his life and career.
It all began so innocuously, albeit painfully, when he shattered his right leg playing for the Canberra Vikings club side four years ago, snapping his tibia and fibula clean in half. If only that were the extent of his travails, as Alexander, one of world rugby's rising stars, recounted in Dublin this week.
"It was the second or third day in hospital when they discovered I had breathing problems," he recalls. "Then an embolus (in essence, a migratory blood clot) formed in my lungs and there was also some bone marrow threatening to enter into my bloodstream.
"It was pretty bad, I didn't realise how bad it was at the time. If it had reached my brain, there would have been some serious worries. My father is a doctor and he was there all the time, trying to figure out what was going wrong along with everyone else.
Operate
"I couldn't breathe properly. So, for the next few weeks, I was just lying there in hospital and they had to try to straighten my leg before they could operate on me. Even when they put a cast on my leg, it wasn't getting any better."
Alexander had bed sores as he lay imprisoned in a hospital bed. Unable to move. Unable to eat. Unable to perform a human's most basic bodily function. Any attempt to walk to the toilet was rendered academic as his weighty cast would threaten to tear his leg apart.
For those tortuous three weeks, Alexander hadn't known the half of it. "It was only much later I found out that if it (the embolus) got past my lungs, it could have been much more serious. Thankfully, now it's all good and I'm all the better for it."
His subsequent astonishing career ascent was not merely thanks to a metal pole and the variety of screws inserted in his leg; what happened between his ears was just as important. After all, this was the guy whose mother, when told her son was taking up rugby for the first time aged 12, had to lock the cupboards to prevent her son gorging on food. Her efforts were in vain.
As a teenager, Alexander weighed in over a whopping 20 stones. Losing two stones in hospital, as well as discovering the horrific details of what may have happened to him, caused him to seriously question his lifestyle.
"That injury was my catalyst," he reveals. "I was always guilty of being a bit lazy and a bit slack in my preparation in off-the-field terms. I'd train hard, but I wouldn't do all the diet stuff or do any extras.
"But when I was on the comeback trail from that injury, I had an epiphany. I was thinking: 'Mate if you're going to make it and be a professional footballer, you need to do an awful lot more work.' I like to think that the injury made me work a lot harder than I did."
Through a family contact in England, Alexander headed off -- just 13 months after swerving the potentially fatal blood clot -- to play for Bedford in the English First Division.
The hard grounds often left him in agony and he had to return home to remove the metal pole, forcing him out for another two months. A route via reserve-grade teams and the ephemeral Australian Rugby Championship scarcely hinted at the remarkable career change to come.
But early last year, he was picked up by the Brumbies' Academy, making his senior-team debut in just the third game of the season against the Queensland Reds; a couple of months later, new Australian coach Robbie Deans and his assistant, former Munster favourite Jim Williams, selected him for the national squad. Since then, it's all been gravy.
"It's all happened so fast, but you know I always had a belief that I could eventually make it. There's no better environment in which to learn, it's probably the toughest. I'm trying to soak up everything I can and learn as much as possible."
Williams certainly enthuses about a player who, it would seem, has consigned Australia's most-capped prop Al Baxter to the history books and one who can also competently cover both sides of the scrum, that rarest of finds in the international game.
"He certainly came onto the scene out of the blue, and given that we picked him up straight away he's had a fairly quick initiation," offers Williams. "He's been making the transition to tight-head this season and all that has happened very quickly.
"It's been a learning curve and he's had to handle it well while training and doing other things. You want to get your best players on the pitch and he's certainly one of them. He's still learning and wants to improve. Coming over here will help his football because he's obviously been scrummaging immensely. His work-rate is excellent."
Leinster's erstwhile wrecking ball, Australian captain Rocky Elsom, is similarly effusive in his admiration for the bolter, recalling a fitting vignette from the summer clash with the All Blacks in Wellington.
"Ben had some difficulties with Tony Woodcock," he remembers. "The referee got involved. Instead, of getting bogged down in it, Benny handled it really well. He didn't argue, he took it in and he finished the Test well. He adapted."
Such maturity betrays his late introduction to the game. As a seven-year-old, the 1991 World Cup quarter-final passed him by. "Mate, I didn't even know what rugby was at that time," he says. "I've seen your flanker's (Gordon Hamilton) try a few times since, though."
His father had never been allowed to play rugby as a kid; hence he played soccer. Alexander's parents were also keen swimmers and the future Wallaby mimicked that interest, as well as dabbling in basketball and Aussie Rules, which remains a keen interest and he is overjoyed at following in the footsteps of his AFL countrymen. "Even if it got too hairy at times!" he smiles.
Rugby belatedly arrived in his sixth year of primary school. "Some family friends convinced my parents to let me and my brother play. From that day on I never looked back and now we're totally a rugby family.
"My parents were very good swimmers, dad played professional soccer. I played Aussie Rules, a lot of basketball mainly. When we lived in the US, I played baseball. We all swam. Good genes, I guess!"
Alexander was on the Lansdowne Road terraces three years ago when Ronan O'Gara kicked Ireland to success in the sides' last meeting on Irish soil.
"I was the last person in the planet who thought I'd be in this position three years later," he admits.
You can be sure he'll take it all in his stride. After all, he's had bigger battles.
- David Kelly
Irish Independent
