FLANKER TO HOOKER

As he deals with the stresses of rehab after that shocking knee injury, Jack Willis reveals how lake fishing has helped his mindset

THREE months on from the crocodile roll and the anguished cry, Jack Willis admits to having good days and bad days.

Today is a good day. He has a ticket for the rugby, watching his club Wasps with brother Tom, play Worcester at the Ricoh.

The day we spoke was more challenging. There had been three hard sessions of rehab to get through, with the promise of six to seven months more of the same.

“There are battles that go on in your head on a daily basis,” said the Premiership’s Player of the Season. “Battles that when you’re playing you don’t have.

“There are days – and this has been one

– where I really struggle for motivation, where I really don’t know how I’m going to keep chugging. I’d be lying if I said there weren’t times I was pretty fed up.”

One minute Willis, 24, was coming off the bench for England at Twickenham and scoring a try on his Six Nations debut against Italy (inset, top). Almost the next he was screaming in pain after being rolled out from a ruck in a way which tore and ruptured ligaments in his left knee (inset below).

Coming so soon after a year-long recovery from injury to his other knee only made matters worse.

“It sends shivers down my spine every time it gets replayed,” he said. “I can still feel the crunch and the pop and the pain.”

That was mid-February, since when England and Wasps have slumped alarmingly. Mental Health Awareness week was a timely reminder to check Willis is OK. “There are times I really do feel sorry for myself going through this again,” he said. “Times I need my brother to come round for a cuppa and a few Hobnobs. But actually I’m incredibly lucky when I think of the support I can call on.”

The trick has been to find ways of keeping himself “distracted mentally” when the demands of rehab threaten to drag him down.

He set up a property agency with a mate and when not working on that he is to be found at a nearby fishing lake, often with his dad.

“Fishing lets the mind rest for a bit,” he said. “I’m not sitting there thinking, ‘This is going to be the end of me.’ I’ll be back, but I need to make sure the knee is right.

“Not for one or two games but the rest of my career.”