ARNOLD ON HOW INJURIES HAVE DEFINED HIS CAREER
ONLY as he recounts the extraordinary extent of his injury problems does the smile of Sam Arnold grow thin. Through most of a conversation in Munster’s high performance centre at the University of Limerick, the 22-year-old centre beams, this due to his disposition rather than half an hour in the company of some journalists.
But the story of his young career is still more about the absences than the achievements. Great sweeps of his life as a professional player have been devoured by injuries.
‘If I’m being completely honest with you it was a complete nightmare,’ he says.
The darkness descended first in January 2016, when he was playing for Ulster against Oyannax in what would be his only European appearance for the province.
‘I tore my hamstring,’ he says, before taking a deep dive into over a year of horrendous fitness difficulties.
‘I came back from that and tore it again. And then I tore it again and I was trying to get myself fit for the Under-20 World Cup. I was hoping to do a second U20 World Cup, and the physio at the time said “It’s touch and go, just try and do a whole pre-season here”.’
He was at Munster by then, joining the province that summer after 14 games across two seasons for Ulster.
‘And then in the first week of preseason I did my first knee injury,’ he says, pausing. ‘That’s when it started getting tough.’
He had damaged the posterior cruciate ligament. ‘After six months out with the hamstring I’m told I’m out for another five months with the knee. I came back playing after the knee injury and I wasn’t playing very well.
‘It took me two or three months to run a speed I’d run previously, before the injury, so it took a while. And then during that time I actually tore the medial ligament in the other knee which kept me out eight weeks.
‘It wasn’t until I came back from that, that I actually hit a speed I’d managed to do before my injuries. Then I had a niggle in my ankle and I was trying to play with that. It was just horrendous. I was playing games and it felt the body was just hanging off me, in pieces basically.’
Just hearing that medical history makes the listener want to reach for an ice-pack and the sanctuary of a couch.
And as positive as Arnold seems to be, he admits that amid the physical suffering, he was feeling psychologically tender, too.
‘We have a psychologist that we can see (at Munster) and I don’t know who it was but somebody said it was probably best if I went and spoke to them for a bit,’ he says.
‘I had a few sessions with the psy- chologist and we put together a plan. It was just about gradually building myself back in, back to where I was.
‘There were times in those 18 months when I was really, really struggling and I probably took it out on the people closest to me around here.
‘I think guys probably got the wrong impression of me at first because I was so frustrated. Luckily now things are a lot better and I can be happier.
‘That’s why I am so grateful to the guys around here. When things were tough and hard they probably didn’t want to help me — I was being difficult — but guys rallied round me and really helped me through the tough times.’
A bad run of misfortune was further complicated by the fact Arnold was in a new environment. Injuries followed him to Munster, and throughout last season, his first in Limerick, they dug in for a long stay.
He was to find one senior player especially helpful, but then Keith Earls can furnish more than his share of stories from sick bay.
‘The lads will tell you that when you’re injured you seem like the world’s against you and even the smallest kind of thing can push you to the point of breaking, especially when you’ve had it for nearly two years and you’re wondering, “Am I even going to get back playing again”,’ says Arnold.
‘The guy that really helped me out would have been Earlsy. Before I got back playing I chatted with him and he’d had two seasons where he missed rugby and he asked me had I tried losing a bit of playing weight and playing a bit lighter and just trying that.
‘And I did do that for a while and that actually managed to get my body back into the game and I managed to get back up to a playing weight that I was at before. He’s one guy I couldn’t be more grateful to for helping me out.’
Arnold eventually emerged through desolate times. His recovery is made more impressive by the fact that immediate family were not at hand; he is English-born and reared. Ireland was always his passion, thanks to his mother, Jackie, a native of Wexford.
He moved from school to Ulster, but a conversation with his agent revealed interest from Munster. His grandfather was from Bere Island so the Cork connection sweetened the prospect. Family clearly means a great deal to him, but there were professional imperatives, too. Ulster’s playing roster at the time was packed enough to make envisaging a route to regular rugby difficult. The move took courage, and it is finally bringing him reward. Since November, he has been a regular in the team. He played his first European match against Leicester at Thomond Park in December. He was brilliant in a 33-10 victory, and Brian O’Driscoll named him as his Man of the Match. ‘That was funny, it was kinda surreal,’ he grins, ‘but I think that they could have given it to Rhys Marshall or Chris (Cloete), I think they were both unbelievable that day. ‘I think because I was 13,’ he starts, suggesting O’Driscoll may have been swayed by a strong display in the position he made famous in this country. There would be even more notable recognition of how he fared through the winter, however. Joe Schmidt
‘GUYS RALLIED ROUND AND HELPED ME IN THE TOUGH TIMES TIMES’
took him to Ireland’s training camp in Spain in January ahead of the Six Nations.
He was included again in an extended squad during a down week.
The Irish centre positions are now as furiously-contested as they have ever been, but attracting the attention of Schmidt is good business nonetheless.
When his phone rang last January with a strange number, it was the lift Arnold needed. Days earlier, in one of the festive inter-provincials, his return to Ulster ended with a red card after 59 minutes. He was sent off for a high tackle on Christian Lealiifano.
‘I had actually just got the red card and I was feeling a bit sorry for myself, and then the phone went off and it said Dublin underneath the number.
‘And I thought, “Who’s this? Who on earth is this ringing me here?”
‘I picked it up not expecting anything and obviously heard the Kiwi accent and it was Joe, and he was just saying, “Look, we just want you to come in for a few days and get a taste for the environment”.
‘That was a good pick-me-up, and it was timed to perfection, really, because I was pretty gutted with the red card.’
His account of Schmidt’s camp conforms to the orthodoxy: a place where perfection is tirelessly sought, and where the standards are set by the head coach.
‘His game understanding is unbelievable,’ says Arnold.
‘I think that’s something that really helped me out, like when to play flat to the line, when to play deep, that’s something that I really picked up when I was in there.
‘And also the attention to detail: nothing goes unmissed and you know when you’re in there that you can’t switch off for a second because if you do, you’re probably going to get caught out in the video review.’
Arnold impressed in Munster’s win over Toulon in the European quarter-finals at the end of March as he and Rory Scannell faced down Ma’a Nonu and Mathieu Bastareaud. France international Henry Chavancy could be among the players occupying Arnold this afternoon when they meet Racing in Bordeaux’s Stade Chaban-Delmas.
He briefly slips into regimented rugby talk when referencing the ‘massive’ challenge that Racing undoubtedly present.
Arnold’s story is much richer than churned-out rugby clichés, though.
‘I was playing AIL rugby in September and I was just happy to be back playing,’ he says.
‘I’d had a nightmare two seasons, so if you’d said to me in September that I might be playing against Bastareaud I wouldn’t have believed you.