A serious knee injury cost Robbie Kruse a FIFA World Cup finals place earlier this year, but the Bayer 04 Leverkusen forward grafted through some heavy rehabilitation to ensure he did not miss out on next month’s Asian Cup on home soil.
The 26-year-old tore his anterior cruciate ligament in January and was forced to watch from afar as the Socceroos lost to Spain, Netherlands and Chile in Brazil.
Kruse acknowledged nothing would make up for missing out on a first World Cup, but added the carrot of competing at a home Asian Cup kept him going as he battled back to full fitness.
Photo: EPA
“My rehab went for about seven or eight months... this tournament I was working towards the whole time,” Kruse told reporters yesterday. “I was at rehab for seven, eight hours a day and I’ve never had to work that long in my life. I can’t right the wrong of not being able to go to the World Cup. You go through so many emotions when you miss out on a big tournament like a World Cup and I’m thankful that this has come around just six months later.”
“Hopefully, this Asian Cup I can really stamp my authority on the competition,” he said.
Kruse made his debut for the Socceroos prior to the 2011 Asian Cup and scored the final goal in a 6-0 rout of Uzbekistan in the semi-finals of the tournament in Qatar, where Australia finished as runners-up to Japan.
Kruse went on to establish himself as a regular under former Australia coach Holger Osieck, who was axed shortly before the World Cup finals following back-to-back 6-0 friendly defeats by Brazil and France.
Kruse returned to action following the length injury lay off in October with Leverkusen, but has been used infrequently since.
Despite that, he was named in Ange Postecoglou’s 23-man Asian Cup squad and is likely to feature regularly along with central striker Tim Cahill when the Socceroos take on South Korea, Kuwait and Oman in Group A matches.
However, forward Kruse is taking nothing for granted.
“Learning how to walk and contract your muscles again, it’s quite taxing. You miss out on so many things and you start to appreciate how good of a life you have as a footballer,” Kruse said. “Sometimes I used to get annoyed at having to train all the time, but now I’m just happy to be able to run on the field.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier