Obano hopes to put setbacks behind him

Bath prop Beno Obano has spoken to cousin Maro Itoje about his many career setbacks on Itoje’s Pearl Conversations Podcast.

The cousins discuss everything from their rugby careers to their childhood holidays, as well their experiences in professional rugby being British-nigerian.

Speaking of his first major setback when Obano was still in school and part of the Wasps academy, he said: “I was playing for my 1st XV at the time. I was 16, so I was still in year eleven playing for the 1st XV and in the last minute of the game I went for a jackal and the ground just went underneath me.

“I’ve done the splits and torn my hamstring. Obviously, at the time you don’t know anything about injuries, I was just thinking, ‘I’ve pulled it,’ I just thought it was okay and I’ll be back in a week or two.

“It has never been the same since. ‘Til this day, ’til this running session I did this morning, it’s never been the same since.”

After signing a contract with Wasps, Obano had a scan on a back injury which revealed he had fractured it and missed the majority of the season.

Obano said: “I was learning how to run again properly.

“This was all happening at 19 and I don’t think people understand – when you’re 18, 19 you can’t fully comprehend injuries and what it takes to return from them.”

After leaving Wasps, Bath offered Obano the chance to play an A league game.

Obano said: “I trained for Bath for a week and then went and played in that game and lasted 18 minutes. They dragged me off after 18 minutes. I hadn’t played rugby in a year and I must have been about 126kgs.”

Despite that, Obano was offered a contract with Bath and spent the season on loan at Coventry before emerging at Bath and breaking into the England

reckoning before tearing every ligament in his knee in May 2018.

Obano said: “Because of my hamstring I don’t trust physios that much, so I don’t trust what they say. But I have a good friend of mine called Keir Wenham-flatt. He works in college football now in America and if I had an issue I would always call him. That was important.

“So the physios would suggest something and I’d call people to make sure what I’m doing is correct.

“Then all you have to do is make a good plan and just stick at it, be consistent with it and that’s basically what I did.

“I just trusted the people that I knew and the physios that I knew that I trusted, not just the club physios, and basically created a plan with them and then followed that.

“I remember I’d get in so many arguments with my physio because they would tell me to do stuff I’d refuse to do.

“But it worked and I got back in nine months.”

With his knee injury curtailing any hopes of a place in the 2019 World Cup squad, Obano returned to Bath and had been an ever-present before the season was paused due to the lockdown. After making it into the Six Nations squad following injury to Mako Vunipola, Obano is now more determined to finally get his shot in an England jersey.

■ FORMER bath full-back Tom Homer has returned to London Irish.

After spending five years with Bath, the 30-year-old scored nine tries in 70 games, Homer is rejoining the club whose academy he graduated from and was capped by England at under18 and under-20 level whilst there.

It is not known how long the contract is for, but Homer told the club’s website: “I am delighted to get the chance to come back to where it all started and to put the green jersey on again.”