18-year-old Joshua Kemp suffered a career-threatening injury in a serious collision with Tallangatta’s Joel O’Connell last week.

Kemp felt the full force of an O’Connell bump, which accidentally collected him under the ribs and damaged his kidney.

The young Lion was rushed to hospital in Melbourne where he spent the following six days before returning home to Wahgunyah, before being raced back to Albury where he spent another week-and-a-half under observation.

Kemp is booked in for a CT scan in Albury on Monday and will be told the extent of the damage and whether he will ever play football again on Wednesday. 

“It was a stage four laceration, so it was pretty much split in half and cracked,” Kemp said.

“I can remember everything leading up to it and I can remember the last five seconds, but after that all I can pretty much remember is laying on the ground.

“I don’t think it was deliberate or anything, I think we just ran into each other.

“I started running into the centre because we got the ball back and I was hoping it was going back around.

“Just as the ball left, I went to turn and he (O’Connell) braced himself and I wasn’t ready for it.

“He’s a lot bigger than me (in weight), so it pretty much just squashed me because we were running pretty fast.

“One force hit another and one had to lose I guess.

He’s a bit shorter than me, he’s 5’9” and I’m nearly 6’1” and he ducked and pretty much got me straight under the rib cage with his shoulder.

“He obviously couldn't stop, so he had to try put me down on the ground as best he could, but it didn’t work out really well.”

Kemp had keyhole surgery to determine what was wrong, but didn’t require another operation.

“They said if you recover well, we don’t have to try fix it or take it out, so I had to lay still for a week-and-a-half,” he said.

“When I was in ICU in Melbourne, they said it’s probably not going to be great and once I got rushed back to Albury hospital, they said it will get to 75 to 80 per cent full healing.

“It looks like a kidney bean with a ‘v’ cut out of it, so it’s weaker than it should be.

“It split in half and they didn’t do anything because a blood clot was actually holding it together.

“When the blood clot deteriorates it gets smaller and it’s meant to pull the kidney together.”

Unfortunately for Kemp, he was experiencing a career-best season in just his second year at senior level.

“I don’t know what the results are going to be, but it’s a gut feeling that they’re going to tell me not to play anymore,” Kemp said.

“That’s just how it goes, you risk those sort of things happening and it’s all part of the game.

“It was pretty had to take, but that’s how it is.

“It was my best year of football, but all good things have to come to an end, unfortunately.”