Dominic Johns: From Injury to Captaincy at HKFC Soccer Sevens

Two years ago, Dominic Johns stood on the touchline at the 2024 HKFC Standard Chartered Soccer Sevens, a spectator with a shattered leg and no idea just how dark the road ahead would become.

The Australian forward, a sharp, inventive presence for Football Club, had seen his season – and almost his career – torn apart by one tackle. A challenge from North District’s Ho Chun-ho snapped the tibia and fibula in his right leg, and the initial surgery that followed did not fix the damage.

What came next was worse.

A second operation was needed to remove a metal rod and explore what else had gone wrong. Then infection set in. Johns spent three to four months on antibiotics, his leg “hanging floppy”, as he put it, waiting for answers that never seemed to arrive. Only in November 2024, in Sydney, did another major procedure finally set him on a genuine path to recovery – a path that would twist and stall for far longer than he expected.

Back then, he was a restless, uncomfortable onlooker, reduced to watching teammates in a tournament he should have been lighting up. This time last year, he was behind a camera, employed to create digital content for the 2025 edition, still not ready to play.

This weekend, he walks out as captain of Football Club at the same sevens.

“It’s third time lucky,” he said. The phrase carries the weight of what followed that first break: “a very, very long process, with too many setbacks to count”.

For most of the first 18 months, he could not even map out his rehab. Every time he tried to plan, another complication appeared. Another delay. Another scan. Another doubt.

The physical pain was one thing. The mental toll ran deeper. Johns admits the past two years have been scarred by “a pretty big mental struggle”, the uncertainty grinding him down as much as the injury itself.

Just when the horizon seemed to clear, the game turned on him again. Early this season, in what should have been a routine friendly, he took another blow. It hurt his leg. It hurt his confidence more.

Yet here he is, back at HKFC, no longer the man on crutches or the content guy behind the lens, but the one wearing the armband. The same tournament that once framed his lowest point now offers something very different: a chance to prove that the struggle was not the end of his story, but the start of a new one.