Pure freak luck ended Mark LeCras' season before a ball had been bounced, but don't feel too sorry for the sharpshooter.
In a hammer blow for the West Coast Eagles' hopes of bettering their top-four finish last year, LeCras hobbled off the training track on Thursday after an innocent looking slip ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee.
LeCras has played 100 games of AFL footy, kicked 234 goals and has run out onto the MCG to represent his club in front of almost 70,000 people against Collingwood in a qualifying final.
Compare his story with that of Brad Smith, who was taken by the Eagles – at the age of 25 – with pick 57 in the 2004 National Draft, but tore his ACL in two successive pre-seasons and never played a game.
A colleague once remarked to me that it was sad when Max Rooke was forced to give the game away at 28 due to a chronic knee injury. What precisely was sad about it? The 135 games? The two flags? Every elite footy player is on borrowed time.
There's always somebody worse off than you and in life there are three certainties – death, taxes and footy players suffering knee injuries.
The rule of thumb with knees these days seems to be: the more innocuous an incident looks, the worse the likely outcome.
Contrast the images of LeCras' spill on Thursday with that of Steve Johnson's knee buckling under an Andrew Embley tackle in last year's preliminary final, or Buddy's hellish landing against the Cats a fortnight earlier – yet both men came back to play key roles the following week.
Jack Ziebell's friendly fire on Nathan Grima on Friday night looked far more worrying than anything LeCras did, yet Grima will live to play on in 2012.
No one likes to see one of the premier players in the competition cruelled by injury before a ball has been bounced, but in a country that performs 10,000 knee reconstructions each year, I found it hard to get caught up in the wave of sympathy for LeCras.
He is a well-paid professional athlete, one who was able to get scans on his knee within 24 hours of going down, and he will be afforded the very best of care before, during and after his operation and throughout the months of exhaustive rehabilitation to come.
Save your sorrow for the blokes who are playing park footy on a Sunday and do their knee, the guys with no private health cover who either have to take out a policy and wait for a year, stump up the thousands of dollars it costs for the operation, or brave the public system and the never-ending waiting list.
If LeCras laid carpet for a living, he would have to seriously consider a new line of work.
As it stands, he'll be back playing footy in 12 months, plus he'll continue to be paid while he recovers.
LeCras will eventually regain full strength – if he follows doctor's orders his knee will be as good as new in time.
But the real battles with reconstructive surgery are fought upstairs. Wasted calves and quads can be rebuilt, but somewhere in the back of his mind will be the thought: 'If this can happen to me once, it can happen again'. And with a game style built largely on being evasive, LeCras may find it harder to get back than others.
In the meantime, Western Bulldogs off-cut Josh Hill looms as the immediate successor for the Frenchman, although he could have some competition from Andrew Strijk and youngster Gerrick Weedon.
West Australian Hill enjoyed a solid season in 2009, kicking 33 goals in 23 matches, but was dropped after the Dogs' qualifying final loss to Geelong.
He managed just 12 games in each of the past two seasons, and was traded by the Bulldogs for pick 49 in the 2011 National Draft.
Strijk, a rookie elevation in 2010 – when he played 10 games and kicked 11 goals – played just once for West Coast last season, and he was forced to undergo minor heart surgery in August to correct his cardiac rhythm.
Weedon was taken with the Eagles' second pick in the 2009 National Draft, and has played just one game for the club – coming on as a substitute in their round 7 loss to Essendon at Etihad Stadium last year.
Like Hill he hails from Broome, and managed 19 senior games with Claremont in 2011, including 16 touches and a goal in their Grand Final win over Subiaco.
Whatever happens, the competition for LeCras' spot is on in earnest – and whoever gets the nod has some mighty big shoes to fill.