When the pain barrier becomes too much
Don’t do it New Zealand. Don’t do a Brad Shields. Don’t sell your body for money and the glory of playing for another country. It will end in tears. It will end in a body that hurts every time you walk to the fridge.
Shields had played 45 minutes of his Wasps debut when he had to leave the pitch with a fractured cheekbone. Maybe he was just unlucky. Maybe it could have happened anywhere in the world. But to some it seemed like a grotesque symbol of the violent battering the modern European rugby player puts his body through week after week.
Shields said: ‘‘A broken face wasn’t the perfect start. My cheekbone cracked and moved along a bit, so they basically had to pull it back into place and screw it. They put a plate on my eyebrow and another one in my cheekbone through the inside of my mouth. Two titanium plates and a couple of screws. It’s fine now and I’m good to go. I’m not Wolverine just yet.’’
If only, Brad, if only. Wolverine has mutant healing powers. You are just another breakable man. For now Shields is fit to play for England against the All Blacks this weekend. He is fit to stare down TJ Perenara’s haka and chuckle at the thought of the England shirts that he left in the drawers of Beauden Barrett and Dane Coles. But how long will the laughter last.
You look at the England team and it is a scandal. They are down to their fifth-choice loosehead prop. Before the South Africa game 15 players were unavailable through injury. They included eight knee injuries, a calf, four ankles, a hand and an arm.
During the match against the Boks Tom Curry left the field with another ankle injury and looks almost certain to miss the All Blacks game. Last season Curry missed the autumn series with a wrist injury.
Last weekend Ken Owens, the Wales hooker, smashed his head in a midfield collision. Owens came back out onto the field early in the second half. A doctor friend of mine could not believe what he was seeing.
There seems no end in sight to the slaughter in Europe. New Zealand’s care for its players is decades ahead of England’s and Steve Hansen is still concerned that they are playing too much rugby. They are. But in Europe the situation is catastrophic.
I understand players from poor Pacific families going over for the money, but it is literally blood money. One day I hope some of the people in charge of club rugby in Europe face a class action because their treatment of the players is negligent. They play them until they break. Then they put them out there again before they are fully mended.
Do you remember the
England team that won 3-0 in Australia in 2016? Half of them are now smashed to bits.
Manu Tuilagi, who might be fit for the weekend, has played once for England since 2014, a victim of attrition injuries. Jonathan Joseph is recovering from ankle surgery. Ben Te’o has had a calf injury, a torn quadriceps and ruptured all his ankle ligaments after the Lions tour.
Te’o says: ‘‘When I was getting ready for surgery for my quad, I was laying in the bed with the gown on and I was thinking, ‘I can’t believe I am going under again for another op’ – more crutches and all that. In both codes there are lots of times where you get pressured into coming back early.
‘‘I think about packing it in the whole time when I wake up and my foot is stiff. But then you get to training and start loosening up. Once you are out playing, and you’ve played five weeks on the bounce, life is really good.’’
The clubs literally trade on that devil’s bargain. They trade on the fact that players will push themselves to come back early because the high of playing is so, so far from the low of coping with injury.
Some don’t make it. Wales and Lions captain Sam Warburton has been forced to retire before the age of 30. England prop Joe Marler walked away from the international game. He was subconsciously trying to pick up yellow and red cards so he would miss England duty. He couldn’t take the travel, the bashing, the time away from his young family.
Most like Billy Vunipola soldier on. Vunipola has had an operation on torn knee ligaments, shoulder surgery, a torn hamstring, two fractures of his right arm and is currently out with a fracture of his left arm. Vunipola is 26.
He says: ‘‘I can tell you a lot of people still have injuries and try to hide it. We saw it with the high turnover of players being released, it’s almost like we’re into NFL territory. Something is going to give. Something might happen where we follow the NFL or NBA, where they had a lockout . . . I feel like something needs to happen for the suits to realise these guys are serious.
‘‘It comes down to how much we play. I might think I’m strong and tough but I’m not. I just got worn down. The suits are always talking about it but they have never played nine months in today’s rugby.’’
Vunipola tried to be a hero and then he would break again. He was too embarrassed to attend sponsors’ events when injured because he felt like a fake. This is the honour of the modern player.
But where is the honour of the people running the game? They will sell out Twickenham for the All Blacks game, even though the match is a fraud. The England team is just a shadow. The public is being cheated. The All Blacks are being cheated.
But the RFU and the owners of the clubs will keep taking the money, cosy in the knowledge that they will not be the ones on their hands and knees, crawling to the bathroom through the pain.
One day I hope some of the people in charge of club rugby in Europe face a class action because their treatment of the players is negligent.