Hampden league export plans to make AFL history after hip replacement

Glandular fever wrecked a VFL season with Werribee in 2017 and the next year a freak accident saw him lose vision in his eye for three weeks.

Now the Fremantle forward must create history if he wants to add to his tally of 41 AFL matches.

Corbett, 27, is 11 weeks post-surgery after undergoing an anterior hip replacement on his right side.

The Dockers have placed him on their long-term injury list while the former North Warrnambool Eagles player plots a path back to the elite level.

"It's never been done, someone coming back and playing football with a hip replacement in the AFL," Corbett told The Standard.

"That is my goal - to be the first one to come back. There's no one to really go and look at what they did previously, I am the one to set the tone for it all and see how it goes.

"I am optimistic about getting back and playing AFL and that's my goal at the moment.

"If I didn't believe I could still play good AFL football, I wouldn't be in the system still, I wouldn't be training as hard as I am and doing all the extra things to give myself the best opportunity.

"Most of the case studies you have are 50-plus with hip replacements and they're not professional athletes.

"It really excites me to be the first (in the league) and pave the way and see what we can achieve."

Corbett, who won the Dockers' best clubman award in his just his first season at the club in 2023, said his first goal would be to play with Peel Thunder - Fremantle's affiliate - in the WAFL later this year, all going to plan.

"People often ask me 'how long is it going to last, the hip replacement?' and it's cliche but how long's a piece of string," he said.

"With my profession, the more you're going to use something, the quicker it's going to wear out.

"It probably will wear out faster than someone who has an office job or something that has a little less impact on the joint."

The strong-marking goal-kicker, who played in a Hampden league grand final as a teenager, has already noticed a major boost in his quality of life after battling the degenerative hip condition.

"It's been the best thing I have ever done," Corbett said of the surgery.

"When you've got pain all the time, it's amazing what you get used to and when that goes away (you go) 'wow'.

"Being 27, I am pretty keen to live my life and run and jump and play and go and play golf.

"It was getting to the point before surgery where I couldn't really tie my shoelaces properly and couldn't bend over to pick things off the ground."

Corbett is working diligently on his rehabilitation with the support of the club which has "a lot of faith in me to achieve my goal of getting back out there to play again".

He is swimming regularly and hopes to start running on a gravity machine using a percentage of his body weight in three weeks' time.

"It's amazing how fast it all travels with the hip replacement," Corbett, who also spent four seasons at Gold Coast, said.

"I was four hours post-surgery and I was up on a frame walking around the hospital.

"They like to get you up and moving pretty quickly.

"It's been crazy how well I've been able to heal and that's obviously a benefit of my age and what I am doing in my job - full-time essentially is rehab."

The pool has become crucial to the 190-centimetre footballer's rehabilitation program as he builds up strength.

"I have been up in water aerobics - not classes - but with all my 65 to 70-year-old friends doing the same walking," he said.

"I am now pretty much off walking restrictions. I had a step restriction for a while which was mindful of the prosthesis which is the metal rod which went to the top of my femur bone, just making sure it didn't have too much load too quickly."

Corbett, known and respected for his bubbly personality and penchant for a conversation, has come up with tasks to keep his mind busy.

He decided to work towards swimming 10 kilometres in the pool.

"I swam for two-and-a-half hours, looked at my watch at the end and realised my watch hadn't worked the whole time," he laughed.

"I was nearly in tears to be honest. It was one of the hardest things I've done. It was very boring and very slow.

"For someone who enjoys a conversation, it was probably the worst possible thing for me."

Corbett, who spent three weeks travelling around Switzerland, Italy and Spain with wife Mikayla on their belated honeymoon before surgery, is immersing himself in Fremantle's AFLW and community programs too.

He will also spend time with Peel Thunder "whether it's match-day coaching, welfare stuff or being around for a spare set of hands" throughout the 2024 season.

As for the AFL program, Corbett has been an eager onlooker at pre-season training with draftee Cooper Simpson, who has inherited Matthew Pavlich's famous number 29, and big-bodied midfielder Matthew Johnson impressing.