Wasps ace Taylor on injury hell
“WITH this sort of knock, you can’t see an end to it,” said Tommy Taylor. “It does trick you.”
The Wasps hooker’s season came crashing to a halt back in November after reporting a head injury to the club’s medical team following the Premiership Cup clash with Bristol Bears.
Having made just eight starts for his club since suffering a major knee injury while on England duty in the summer of 2017, the former Sale Sharks forward was hopeful it would be a comparatively minor issue.
A week or two on the sidelines, then back at it.
But weeks turned into months. Three, to be precise.
Along with team-mate Simon McIntyre, who was knocked unconscious against Bristol, the pair would be dropped into a seemingly neverending cycle of praying for symptom-free days before ‘return to play’ protocols could commence.
Having missed 43 weeks of rugby due to his ACL issue and subsequent knocks from the tail of the 2016/17 campaign rolling into the business end of last season, the long blond haired hooker was eager to make up for lost minutes this time around. A mindset that may have contributed to his subsequent downfall.
“I think I had one [concussion] a couple weeks earlier, I was probably a little bit naive to it,” said Taylor, who lasted just 11 minutes before a head injury ended his afternoon against Bath in the Heineken Champions Cup, three weeks prior to the Bristol Bears match.
“I didn’t recover enough from it and played again.
“A lot of it is on the player and you describe your symptoms and we all want to play, we are all desperate to play so that is the hardest part of it.
“It can be the smallest knock, SiMac had a big knock and keeps you out for a while so it is a tough one physiologically I think more than anything.
“But as soon as you are right, you kind of know that you are right.”
During Taylor’s and McIntyre’s prolonged period out of action, fears began to grow among Wasps fans whether the duo would indeed return at all as Wales international Leigh Halfpenny’s head injury issues attracted similar comments of concern.
Taylor, McIntyre and Halfpenny’s recoveries were to follow a similar path centering around the expert work being carried out by Professor Tony Belli at the Birmingham Sport Concussion Clinic. “It is something that a lot of specialists are looking at now and we got top bloke in Professor Tony Belli who is doing a lot of work,” said Taylor.
“It has changed a little bit since I started. It is a bit more progressive now, it is not sitting in a dark room it is more they get you on a bike and working your heart rate up to a certain level where your symptoms progress and you keep edging that up.
“That is probably why it takes so long, but yes it why it is just so difficult, it is a 24-hour thing. You go home and it is the same thing you can’t really switch off and it’s just about looking after yourself.
“Get lots of sleep, lots of rest and when you do work here [at Wasps], I put in the work here so it is a frustrating time and there is no time length to it and there is no reason for it.
“It can be the smallest knock and be out for three months or the biggest knock and be out for a week.”
Taylor made his return from the replacements bench against Worcester Warriors last month before further substitute appearances against Bristol Bears and Sale Sharks.
He’s started Wasps’ last two games to put the concussion nightmare behind him, but conceded there was a time when he wondered if he would ever return to the pitch.
“You do,” he confirmed. “But I think everyone here, the physio has been so supportive and they have said especially only half an hour away they will come from Wales to here so it is quite lucky he is here.
“You get reassurance from him and that is the good part of it.”
He added: “With knees and other things like that you get given a time period and you can kind of get your head around that you have three months out or you have two months out. Heads, it is a bit different. You’re kind of guessing everyday really when you wake up and how’s it feeling and then you start running and you start training again.
“But, the protocols are in place now which is good. We see all the right people and the club look after you so it is reassuring.”