Nowell: I’ve never felt worse pain

Jack Nowell knew he was in trouble the second chris Harris’s elbow caught him in the face. The exeter chiefs wing, who today makes his first start for more than two months, has been involved in thousands of collisions but it was the most innocuous of knocks that resulted in a horror injury.

It was a sunny afternoon at Sandy Park and high-flying chiefs were entertaining Newcastle Falcons. Nowell, buoyed by his summer exploits for the lions, was showing good form in pursuit of a starting spot in eddie Jones’s england side for the autumn internationals.

Then the cornishman’s season took a dark turn. Trailing 10-0, the Falcons attacked and Nowell was in the frontline ready to make a hit. a stray elbow to the face from Harris and the 24-year-old collapsed in a heap.

The game carried on but Nowell lay on the turf in agony.

‘It’s the worst pain I’ve been in on a rugby field,’ said Nowell. ‘My whole face went very numb because there are quite a lot of nerves in that area.

‘I was in the doc’s room getting a cut above my eye stitched up. Then my eye started to close up and my sight got a bit groggy. I actually put my scrum-cap on to come back on but another doctor gave me a few tests and said, “Right, go to hospital and get an X-ray. let’s see what’s actually happened”.

‘It was weird because the Newcastle player hardly touched me.’

Tests confirmed Nowell had small fractures to his left cheekbone and eye socket and he had immediate surgery to repair the area before a frustrating recovery period and a second operation to repair the damage completely.

‘ For something so small, it caused a lot of damage,’ he said. ‘It’s not like with a knee (injury) where you can rehab it.

‘ You’ve got to rest. I wasn’t allowed to walk the dogs, I wasn’t allowed to raise my blood pressure in any way. I wasn’t allowed to drive.

‘ In the end, I was sleeping upright. and icing it every single minute of the day I possibly could. after the second operation, everything’s a lot better.’

He has been eased back recently with appearances off the bench against Bath before last Sunday’s 18-8 home defeat by leinster — exeter’s first defeat at Sandy Park in 12 months.

Today exeter are on a revenge mission in Dublin but Nowell, who has 11 tries in 31 england Tests, is just happy to be back.

‘There was a lot of p***-taking when I came back in,’ he said. ‘But if someone’s not being mean to you, they probably don’t like you. I just wanted to get back — there’s only so long you can sit at home twiddling your thumbs.’

He has ground to make up but Nowell’s vision for this season is now clear.