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, his right leg in pieces and his future clouded. A fortnight earlier, a tackle from North District’s Ho Chun-ho had snapped both the tibia and fibula. The bones went. So did his momentum. He had no idea that the damage would run far deeper than the fracture.

Johns, a sharp, inventive forward for Football Club, went under the knife quickly. The first surgery failed him. A second procedure followed to remove a metal rod and probe fresh concerns. Then came the worst twist of all: infection.

His leg ballooned into a medical saga. Three or four months on antibiotics. His words: the leg “hanging floppy”. No stability, no certainty, no football. By November 2024 he was in Sydney for another operation, one that finally set him on a long, winding road back, but not without a heavy toll.

What looked from the outside like a standard recovery became something else entirely. The physical pain was obvious. The mental strain, less so. Johns admits the next two years were scarred by “a pretty big mental struggle”, a battle with doubt and frustration that outlasted the initial injury.

For most of the first 18 months, he could not even map out his rehabilitation. Every time he tried to plan, another setback arrived. Another scan. Another worry. Another delay. The process dragged, then dragged some more.

This weekend, the picture could not be more different.

The same tournament where he once sat as a restless, uncomfortable spectator will see him lead Football Club out as captain at the 2025 HKFC Standard Chartered Soccer Sevens. Last year he worked the event from behind a camera, producing digital content while others played. Now, at last, he steps back over the white line.

“It’s third time lucky,” he said, a simple phrase carrying the weight of surgeries, infections and sleepless nights. “It’s been a very, very long process, with too many setbacks to count. For most of the first 1½ years, I couldn’t plan the rehab because I never knew what would happen next.”

Just when the horizon had begun to clear, the game hit him again. Early this season, in what should have been a routine friendly, Johns took another blow. The pain was sharp, but it was the echo of old trauma that cut deepest. After everything he had endured, it felt like the past trying to drag him back.

He kept going.

From a “floppy” leg and an infection that threatened to derail his career, to the captain’s armband at one of Hong Kong’s showcase tournaments, Johns has already won one fight. The next one, played out over seven-a-side pitches this weekend, will tell a different story: not about survival, but about what he can still become.