'When I realised it was proper bad': Alex Noble's four fighting words that transformed tragedy into triumph

A spring Sunday morning in Sydney and a 6am alarm clock.

Time to get to work. A drive to Knox Grammar School, boots on, strap up.

As other teenagers were nursing hangovers, Alex Noble had the smell of green grass in his nostrils as NSW under-17 sevens training kicked off.

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Normal stuff. Warm-up, stretch, drills to hone skills, catch and pass.

Time to step it up. The coaches call for a seven-on-seven, full contact training game.

Noble's team were under the pump.

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Ten minutes of defence, didn't touch the ball, defending their line, tackle after gut-busting tackle.

Not Noble's forte - the talented 16-year-old loved to attack.

Finally, a teammate wins a turnover and a chance to spring into attack.

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You beauty. A nice long pass, maybe 10-15m, a two hand catch right in front of his chest. Now we're talking.

Noble tucked the ball under his right arm, looked up and spied his defender.

Have a go. Try-time or bust. He puts on a David Campese goose step and a left handed fend.

But the tackler goes with him, grabs Noble's wrist with his right hand and his shoulder with his left.

Full control of the arm and the momentum of the tackle sees Noble nosedive, head first into the hard dirt.

"And then the next thing I know is I lay there in the middle of that oval," the now 22-year-old tells Wide World of Sports.

"Flat on my back, looking up to dark and gloomy, cloudy skies, and with the rain trickling down on my face. Thirty of my teammates and coaches standing around me, looking down at me, and I couldn't move a single muscle from head to toe. The only thing I could move was my eyes."

Something was wrong but the natural instinct is to assume a "normal" rugby injury.

"But when I realised it was proper bad was when I was lying there and in my peripheral vision... I saw my right arm horizontal from my shoulder," he recalled.

"It was like my head was decapitated from my body. And that's when I kind of knew it was a different type of injury."

Shock, cluelessness, fear as a 20-30 minute ambulance wait feels like a liftetime.

Physios and trainers holding Noble's head and hoping for the best.

"I remember looking up to the physio and I said: 'Am I gonna be right for my trial game tomorrow'?"

The answer turned out to be no.

The reality turned out to be nine and a half months in hospital.

A broken neck. Severe spinal cord damage. A prognosis that he would never walk again.

Nine days in Royal North Shore Hospital's intensive care unit and a four day coma after spinal surgery.

Noble was diagnosed with C4 quadriplegia, no movement from head to toe.

"A wheelchair for the rest of my life," he recalls.

"Tubes and cords and wires coming out of my stomach, chest, shoulders, arms, hands.

"Coming out of my throat, mouth, nose - a tube all the way down my throat - into my lungs to help me breathe. The only thing I literally move is my eyeballs. And I could think."

Noble remembers staring at the white hospital ceiling hour after hour.

On his fifth night in ICU, he hears distraught older brother Zac telling his parents he is going to give up on his year 12 exams.

"He was saying that it was all too difficult, it's too unfair, it's too overwhelming - which is fair enough. As I was listening into what Zac was saying to my parents, I got filled up with like a sense of guilt, feeling like it was my fault."

Noble hadn't spoken since the accident.

He somehow mustered the strength to do so now, in a weak and croaky voice.

"I whispered to Zac, you know, Zac: 'if I fight, you fight.' I guess that was the exact moment where I chose to not let my situation or my injury define me or define my future and ruin me. I chose to fight, chose to not give up, no matter what it takes."

Noble is now channelling that determination into raising awareness and support for life-changing research.

On Friday he partnered with SpinalCure Australia and rugby legends George Gregan, Matt Burke and Mike Catt for a fundraising lunch at the Hilton Sydney.

More than 20,000 Australians are living with a spinal cord injury and the lunch raised vital funds to accelerate treatments that are helping people with paralysis regain movement and independence.

"Although it's been hard and difficult throughout the six and a half years, I've achieved more than I ever thought that I possibly could, not only in my lifetime, but in a million years," Noble says.

Yep, Noble has been busy.

He missed year 10 and year 11 at St Ignatius' College Riverview as he tackled his rehab.

But he caught up and graduated with distinction along with his year 12 classmates.

Doctors and nurses told him he wouldn't regain any movement from the neck down.

Eight weeks ago he did 10 squats with a 20kg vest on his back.

Noble is a 2025 NSW Young Australian of the Year finalist, motivational speaker and a best-selling author.

He's a tax consultant who just sold his boat charter company and returned from a month-long holiday in Europe and Egypt.

Oh, and he's a quadriplegic.

"When people think of paraplegia or quadriplegia, they immediately give it a negative connotation and they feel sorry for you," he says.

"But I guess what I'm trying to do in my life is trying to show the world that you shouldn't attach a negative connotation to it. Just because you do end up with paraplegia or quadriplegia, in a wheelchair, doesn't mean you can't be great, you know?

"Yes, you might face some difficulties that others don't, but you still have every bit of potential to become something amazing. And so that's what I'm kind of trying to show the world.

"I've accepted the fact that I'm in a wheelchair and I'm striving for greatness anyway. I have a massive desire, just like everybody else in my position, to hopefully find a cure, to hopefully find a treatment, so we can get out of these wheelchairs and we can no longer have all this nerve pain."

Noble harbours no resentment towards rugby.

"Every now and then, when there's a bit of a bad tackle or whatever, you do get a little twitch through your shoulder," he says.

"But yeah, nothing really more than that. It was kind of a freak accident. You look at the probability, it's so unlikely. So, yeah, I guess I've just come to terms with it."

He is open minded about the future and would love to work with sports teams in sharing his wisdom and determination.

And how can people help?

"A lot of people subconsciously or consciously view people with a disability as inferior or disadvantaged. The intent might be good. You want to help them, right?

"But honestly, I think that people need to go with the view that that person is not someone in a wheelchair, they're just a someone, you know.

"They might be more successful than you. They might be more wealthy than you, they might even be happier than you. It's just that they're in a wheelchair.

"It's those daily interactions with people with disabilities. Even just the tone and the voice and the way the interaction goes, that kind of reflects that view that someone is maybe less than them.

"That is what is the most imprisoning and disabling thing about a disability, I think. And so by just viewing the person with a disability as just a person - that is liberating and honestly, I think, the most abling thing ever."