Horne opens up on his life-changing injury
‘‘Rob, you haven’t moved your legs yet.’’ With those words from Northampton team doctor Matt Lee, Australian rugby player Rob Horne’s life changed forever.
It was April 14. The former Waratahs and Wallabies centre was lying on the ground at Welford Road in England’s East Midlands.
He’d taken a big hit from Tigers No 8 Sione Kalamafoni in the opening seconds of his club Northampton’s English Premiership clash with Leicester. He wanted to get up and go again, he couldn’t understand why Lee and others were hovering over him.
‘‘I was pretty adamant, ‘get off me, let me get up, I’m fine’,’’ Horne revealed in a departing interview with the Saints.
‘‘I pretty much said ‘I’m pretty embarrassed here, I don’t need any help’. Then when I was telling [forwards coach] Phil Dowson, who was with me at the time, he was saying ‘it’s OK, don’t worry, just stay down’ and I said ‘no, I need to get up, my family are here, I don’t want to show that I’m hurt’.
‘‘And then Matt Lee, who was securing my head and neck, said ‘Rob, you haven’t moved your legs yet’ and that’s when I went, ‘I haven’t’ and I was just kicking and kicking and kicking and I got my right leg moving.
‘‘And then from there I thought ‘OK maybe I should listen to the medicos, probably for the first time in my career’.’’
It was Horne’s last game of rugby. The collision had caused an avulsion of his brachial plexus. In plain English, he had ripped from his spinal cord the clutch of five nerves that control his shoulder, arm and hand.
‘‘As a result of that I’ve got full paralysis of my right arm and currently with chronic pain.’’
Horne was speaking for the first time about the moment that cut short an enviable career.
The Sydney-raised back was a Waratah for a decade and played 34 tests for the Wallabies before he and wife Simone took their two small children to England to start a new chapter in the Premiership.
At 28, he could reasonably expect a long, lucrative and distinguished career overseas.
Less than a year into their adventure, the Hornes have moved home again, sad to leave the welcoming Northampton community but knowing nothing compares to the embrace of family and lifelong networks in Sydney.
‘‘It’s a really difficult decision because we’ve certainly made our home here in Northampton and we’re part of the community.
‘‘Our youngest was eight weeks when we arrived and now he’s almost one, so he’s spent pretty much his whole life here.
‘‘Northampton is always going to be a part of us but the decision came that it was probably time to head back,’’ he said.
The Saints community is not letting Horne go without a fitting send-off for a player whose nononsense nature was a natural fit at the club.
They are honouring him with a testimonial match at Twickenham on October 6.