INJURY MISERY IN THE PAST, AND JAKE IS HAVING A BALL
JAKE Ball had gone five years without picking up an injury when his luck ran out in 2017. He suffered a gruesome dislocated shoulder that year in the autumn match against the All Blacks and got nerve damage as a result of the operation to fix it.
After recovering from that he ruptured his bicep, got concussed, injured his shoulder again and then required foot surgery.
To say it’s been a tough two years for the likeable bearded lock would be doing him a disservice.
When Ball dislocated his shoulder back in 2017, medics spent hours trying to put it back in place in the bowels of the Principality Stadium.
But the ensuing surgery resulted in nerve damage, which was unlike any injury he’d ever encountered.
“The most frustrating thing about my shoulder was that they said it was meant to be a four-month return,” explained Ball.
“Then there was a bit of a complication because I had some nerve damage from the operation.
“That set me back and it was hard for me, the fact that was on top of it.
“There was a point where it just wasn’t getting any stronger. I had a hole in my back where the muscle had just stopped working because of the nerves that they disrupted.
“At one point I wasn’t sure that was going to get any better.
“As anyone knows with nerve injuries, they’re just frustrating. With other rehab you can rehab hard and get back quicker.
“With a nerve it comes back as quick as it wants to, there is nothing you can do to change that. I found that hard as I’ve never had an injury like that before.”
Ball was targeting a return in the Scarlets’ blockbusting European Champions Cup quarter-final at the end of March 2018.
But it didn’t happen and medics had to save him from himself.
“The annoying thing for me was that I felt really good, but until I passed this strength test they wouldn’t let me play,” recalled Ball.
“I think the way in which the physios dealt with me was brilliant because if it was up to me, I would have been out there and playing.
“It was the right thing to hold me back because there would have been a risk of doing more damage.”
The Scarlets went on to record a famous victory but Ball was left on the sidelines. It was difficult to accept.
In a strange twist of fate, what Ball actually needed was a break. He had to get away from it all.
The week after that La Rochelle game the Scarlets had some down time and Ball was under orders from then head coach Wayne Pivac to go to his sister’s wedding in Perth, Australia.
Ball migrated there with his family when he was 17 and a trip Down Under was viewed as the perfect opportunity to recharge.
“The coaches said ‘We want you to have a bit of down time’ and it was my sister’s wedding back in Perth so they said ‘We want you to go’. They knew how frustrated I was.
“I had a week off, didn’t train and when I came back my strength increased and for whatever reason I seemed to carry on from there.”
His injury problems, though, were far from behind him.
He ruptured his bicep on his return during 40 minutes of pre-season action against Bristol and then suffered a concussion in a game against Glasgow on December 1.
The 28-year-old candidly admits that he returned from that blow too soon and blames the shoulder injury he suffered in a Champions Cup match against Ulster on December 14 on his premature return.
And even more punishment was around the corner.
Ball came on as a replacement in the bruising victory over Scotland during the 2019 Grand Slam and injured himself despite getting just 15 minutes of action.
“In the Six Nations against Scotland it was a bit of a freak one. I only played 15 minutes so I did some conditioning afterwards,” he says.
“I felt all right but then I woke up in the morning and my foot was massive. I went to see somebody and they were on about operating on my toe. It was very frustrating.
“It was a slightly awkward tackle and I tore a load of ligaments in my toe and had some bad bone bruising in the middle of my foot.”
Whilst Ball was going through injury hell, the likes of Cory Hill and Adam Beard emerged to generate real competition in Wales’ secondrow squadron.
It looked as though things were conspiring against him, but sport works in mysterious ways.
Hill has been sent home from Japan after failing to recover from a stress fracture in his leg, while Beard joined the party late following emergency surgery to have his appendix removed.
As Ball sits in the lobby of Wales’ team hotel in Otsu, he has picked up the player of the match award in the World Cup opener against Georgia and impressed in the crucial win over Australia.
But he never doubted he’d get back to where he once was.
“I was always determined to come back,” he insists.
“The biggest motivation when you’re injured is watching people play in that position. That drives you.
“There’s no one at the top level who isn’t competitive and doesn’t want to start — that is your ultimate goal.”
Ball has earned the right to pack down alongside Wales’ talismanic skipper Alun Wyn Jones, who became the most-capped player in Wales’ history last weekend.
He revealed that in each game his motivation is to outdo his captain, however big a challenge that might be.
“It’s a big challenge for me to push him and outdo some of his stats,” he says. “Not that I did that against Australia! For me that’s a goal: to work harder than him. He’s unbelievable. A top-class pro. I hold a lot of respect for Al and what he’s done in the game is brilliant. His leadership has been great over the last couple of years as well. I am really enjoying playing alongside him; he gives me a lot of confidence as well.”
With young lock Beard still seemingly a little way off being fit for action, it seems likely that Ball will go again next to the captain against Fiji on Wednesday, and he deserves to do so.
In Ball’s words, he was due a bit of luck and now he’s making the most of it.