Aidan Corr peers into the overcrowded Giants' rehabilitation room every day at training, grateful he has finally managed to escape its demoralising clutches.
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The 23-year-old defender will head into Saturday's blockbuster against Geelong with an extra spring in his step after committing his future at GWS until 2020 during the week, but it's a spring he thought might never return after spending most of last season with an ankle injury that refused to heal.
It's a lonely place, the rehab room, especially when stuck there for the long haul as Stephen Coniglio, Ryan Griffen, Brett Deledio and Adam Kennedy among others at GWS have discovered this season.
Kicking footballs is replaced by pedalling on an exercise bike, running on the anti-gravity treadmill and a seemingly endless stream of menial physiotherapy exercises to rebuild fraying muscles.
"It can get frustrating, the boys this year like Ryan Griffen and Coniglio, they're going through the same thing. I see them and they're sitting on the bike by themselves and I'm just looking at them thinking, 'I've been there'," Corr said.
"You're doing everything you can and you don't see any progression, just imagine what Lids [Deledio] is feeling like at the moment. He can't get a look in, he's doing all the right things, all the little things well, that's meant to make you better and it's not.
"You wouldn't rather a really bad one which you know is going to take 12 months but at least you have a timeline. No timeline can really rattle a few blokes. A lot of the boys in the team have been there, done that so we're all pretty upbeat about it and try and keep the boys up but it's tough."
The Giants' rehab room is slowly but surely thinning out.
Rory Lobb, Josh Kelly and Devon Smith all return to top-grade action this weekend, while Jeremy Finlayson will debut in place of Zac Williams, who has a tight hamstring.
Corr's trip to the rehab room was triggered in round three against the Swans last year after a marking contest went horribly wrong.
He landed awkwardly on his ankle and heard a loud popping noise, but was encouraged to play on for the rest of the game, even if that meant chasing Lance Franklin around on one leg for a quarter.
Subsequent scans confirmed he'd partly ruptured the deltoid ligament in his ankle, similar to the injury that ended ruckman Shane Mumford's season in 2015.
It was an untimely blow for Corr. He'd just come off a full pre-season having played 19 AFL games the year before, but this set him back to square one and introduced him to the frustrations that can come with being a professional athlete.
The Giants opted to avoid surgery, but it meant no accurate timeline could be attached to his recovery. As it turned out, he didn't play another AFL game for the rest of 2016 but he managed to get back in time to help the reserves win a NEAFL premiership.
"The process of me coming back was a nightmare, it was taking a while to heal, we were getting nowhere, I got a PRP [Platelet Rich Plasma] injection which increases healing," Corr said.
"It almost over-healed so I had excess of scar tissue. When I started running again it was really stiff, my range was poor.
"I got back on the training track, I went for a big mark I was just testing it out about five minutes in and I heard a massive crack. I thought I'd done it again but it was just scar tissue snapping.
"That set me back another two weeks and then that was just the process for the rest of the year really. Little things going wrong here or there, little slips, my ankle just wasn't healing very well.
"I was pretty honest, I asked if we should have done surgery, I thought we should've because I was sitting there for so long.
"They said no, surgery would have ruled me out for the year and it was good at the end of the year because I still got up."
That Corr ended up at the Giants is a minor miracle.
His parents and three siblings emigrated to Perth from Northern Ireland while he was still a toddler, and after less than a year they were ready to head home before deciding to give Melbourne a try.
They slowly grew attached to Australia, and that's where Corr learned to play Australian rules football.
Corr's older brother Cathal was the trailblazer of the family, and spent a year rookie-listed with St Kilda but never played an AFL game.
GWS was keen on Corr leading into the 2012 National Draft, but the full forward turned defender expected he would be heading to North Melbourne before the Giants jumped in early.
He'd spoken to every club bar Carlton in the lead-up, but it was the Giants and Kangaroos who were most keen on his services.
And since being taken at pick No.14 and relocating to Sydney, Corr hasn't looked back.
"We're sitting on top of the ladder at the moment, we're all the same age and all the boys get along so well," Corr said.
"Early days it's pretty tough when you first move up, you miss family and friends and all the stuff at home but you grow up a bit and get over that.
"Everyone's really committed to Sydney which is great and the club makes it really easy."
