Exclusive: Is Rick coming back? Why he kept his injury a secret from The Block producers

The Block’s most chaotic father-daughter duo has taken a massive hit this week with Tayla riding solo after her father, Rick, suffered a nasty knee injury.

In Sunday’s preview, Scott Cam announced that Rick had to leave the show due to an injury, which meant that The Block all-star, Spence Thomson, would be helping the team as Tayla’s “surrogate father”, joked Scotty.

The host disclosed that Rick was taken to hospital, with one question looming large: is he coming back?

In an exclusive chat with Chattr, Rick confirmed that he will soon return. “I did go back after the four days,” he said. However, if it was up to Rick, he would have stayed working.

“I knew I’d be back the next day, but they wouldn’t allow me. It was bursitis in the kneecaps, and it actually got infected, so strict rules said to have the leg elevated for about four days. So rather than staying at the share house, I got driven back home,” Rick told Chattr.

Rick said he was trying to keep his infection on the lowdown before producers found out how serious it was. “When the word sepsis was mentioned, the producers jumped on that because I was mic’d up,” he said. “They pretty much ran in there and said, ‘What’s going on?’ And Tayla pretty much pushed me out the door.”

It ended up being a blessing that the moment being recorded had forced Rick to take his infection more seriously. “The knee did blow up quite a bit and I did have to get rushed off to hospital and have an IV put in. So yeah, probably a good thing in hindsight.”

Rick’s infection that led him to take almost a week off The Block is part of a longstanding ailment he’s had for years. “The knee is gone. I need a replacement. It’s always been a shonky knee, but I think it was just overused on that week leading up to the Alfresco because I had to carry about 20 boxes of tiles up four flights of stairs, and I think that was the start of the downfall,” he said.

“I don’t know how I got infected, but I think I was wearing shorts throughout this job. I must have knocked [my knee] on a nail. I didn’t cut it or anything, but it didn’t take much for infection to set in.”

Ouch! Knee pain is something Rick has long been struggling with. “I’ve had it for years. It started a long time ago, and it’s something I wouldn’t wish upon anyone. It’s so painful.”