{"id":139626,"date":"2021-10-05T20:34:03","date_gmt":"2021-10-05T20:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=139626"},"modified":"2021-10-06T01:01:22","modified_gmt":"2021-10-06T01:01:22","slug":"teenage-uni-student-saved-penriths-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=139626","title":{"rendered":"Teenage uni student saved Penrith's season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Penrith<\/a> can thank an invention made out of cotton fibre some 40 years ago by a teenage university student for playing a big role in delivering them the premiership on Sunday night.<\/p>\n

Terry Kempnich, now a 60-year-old Brisbane businessman, was a promising league player for Nerang Roosters when he dislocated his shoulder in the surf in the early 1980s.<\/p>\n

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Kempnich was studying human movement at the University of Queensland at the time – and decided to experiment to save his football career.<\/p>\n

"I wanted to keep playing footy but my shoulder was a mess," Kempnich told Wide World of Sports.<\/p>\n

"I thought there must be a way to hold it in place and reduce the risk of it dislocating again – so I used my knowledge of movement and biomechanics to come up with a prototype of a brace that goes around the back and shoulders."<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

His home made device, which restricts movement and keeps the shoulder stable, was made out of a strong cotton fibre and proved an immediate success – and the Kempnich shoulder brace was born.<\/p>\n

It has been used by plenty of players ever since – including Nathan Cleary<\/a> for the final two months of the NRL season after he dislocated his shoulder in State of Origin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Without it, he would almost certainly have damaged the shoulder further and required season-ending surgery – a scenario that would have ended Penrith's premiership dream.<\/p>\n

"It gave me a lot of pride to see Nathan wearing it all these years later," Kempnich said.<\/p>\n

"I'm sure it kept the shoulder stable and enabled him to keep playing."<\/p>\n

Kempnich patented his device and it was eventually bought out by the Madison Sports Company, which still markets it today.<\/p>\n

"I didn't make a fortune out of it, but it did allow me to take a nice holiday at the end of every year," Kempnich reflects.<\/p>\n

\"Nathan<\/p>\n

"I'm just glad I have been able to help guys like Nathan keep playing footy."<\/p>\n

Ironically, Kempnich was cheering for Souths in the big one.<\/p>\n

"I joined the police force for a while in Brisbane after uni and Wayne Bennett was one of my instructors," he explained.<\/p>\n

"He was a great guy then and I have always followed his teams – but I'm happy for Penrith – they deserved it."<\/p>\n

For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by<\/em><\/strong> clicking here!<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Penrith can thank an invention made out of cotton fibre some 40 years ago by a teenage university student for playing a big role in […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139626"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=139626"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":139628,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139626\/revisions\/139628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=139626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=139626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=139626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}