Former AFL defender Tim Mohr has detailed the extent of the injury that ended his football career.
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A TSL premiership player with Launceston, the 31-year-old Tasmanian played 48 games over a seven-year stint at GWS before landing at Hawthorn ahead of the 2019 season.
Hopes of extending his career were dashed early in the year, however, when Mohr sustained a horrific knee injury in a VFL practice match.
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The incident marked the third serious knee injury of his AFL career and turned out to be by far the worst.
After six surgeries to repair damaged ligaments, nerves and tendons, Mohr has been diagnosed with drop foot, a condition that leaves him unable to walk without the help of a brace.
Speaking to the Herald Sun, Mohr said the injury would affect all facets of his life.
"At the end of the day I am classified as being disabled for the rest of my life," Mohr said.
"I have been told this is the first and only time this injury has happened in AFL history.
"It's just hard to talk about without getting too emotional. It's still raw in my mind knowing I won't have a fully-functioning body later on in life.
"It's been over a year now and I fully dislocated my knee and ruptured ligaments and did nerve damage and there was a chance the nerve could come back.
"I have been living in hope for the last year, but had to make the decision after Christmas to go in and fix the nerve.
"But the nerve was pretty shot so I have this thing called drop foot. It could be worse - I could be completely paralysed from the hips down.
"For 12 months I had drop foot and the most recent surgery was a nerve and tendon transfer.
"They cut 10cm of good nerve from my body and replaced it. Now I can lift my foot about an inch but from my knee down I can't really feel anything."
A former Riverside High School student, Mohr had completed two years of a building course but is now unlikely to pursue a career in the building industry.
The AFL does not have a Work Cover scheme for athletes who sustain permanent disabilities, leaving Mohr's bid for compensation resting on a claim with the AFL's insurers lodged by the AFL Players' Association.
"The AFLPA have been great through this but at the end of the day I have had a meeting with a lawyer in case nothing happens (with compensation)," Mohr said.
"I don't really want to do that and have never wanted to, but at the end of the day it's my life.
"He says it would be a totally different story if it happened in another industry. He said, 'this would be a no-brainer'.
"You would get compensation in any other industry. There is only one sports code in Australia which has Work Cover and that's jockeys in horse racing.
"(Footy) is such a brutal sport that you would think there would be something but apparently not.
"It would be positive for the players to know they have some sort of back-up if something was to happen."
