Winning the fight Ludlow on course to face Wasps after surgeries

GLOUCESTER Rugby captain Lewis Ludlow is set to be fit to lead his team out at Kingsholm against Wasps on the opening weekend of the new Premiership season having undergone three surgeries this summer.

Flanker Ludlow is the definition of a player who puts his body on the line for his team, regularly topping the Premiership’s top tackler stats, but revealed the cost to his body coming into the closing games of the 2021/22 season.

He said: “I had three surgeries in the first three weeks of the offseason. I had operations on my shoulder, wrist and ankle and I feel as if I have been rebuilt.

“When I was with England during the Six Nations there was a bit of talk about the summer tour but we knew a few games out before the end of the season that I needed surgery and going to Australia was never going to be an option.

“It was more of a question of whether I would be able to play in the semi-final if we finished in the top four of the Premiership. We could not book anything in because of the position we were in, which was good for me but not the medical staff. The reason we went for the surgeries when we did was so I would be good to go at the start of the new season.”

Gloucester missed out on the playoffs, coming fifth, but due to the huge improvements in performance last season, and the impressive foundation to their game that head coach George Skivington has laid, the Cherry and Whites are being touted as one of the favourites to break into the top four heading into the new campaign.

Ludlow believes a big reason for that is the consistency at the club over the summer, with just Fijian international number eight Albert Tuisue arriving and a handful of increasingly fringe players departing.

He said: “I have been at the club for nine years and every summer there was either a huge turnover of players or two or three different coaches with ideas on how they wanted to play and you stood there wondering how it would work.

“This summer hardly anything has changed. Albert has come in, a couple of players have gone out and we can roll things over, not go back to the beginning. It meant that when pre-season came around we could resume from where we left off, adding things rather than having to start over.”

Lewis Ludlow has had surgery on his shoulder, wrist and ankle