Ross, your wish is my command!!
Jack Willis: At times I felt like I’d had enough – but I wanted my son to see me play
Rehabilitation has been hard, but with the help of many – including a 20-stone prop – I’m ready to make my return
Jack Willis, Wasps and England flanker
Saturday February 19 2022, 12.01am GMT, The Times
It has been 53 weeks since I severely damaged my left knee playing for England against Italy. Five minutes earlier had been one of the high moments of my life, scoring a try for my country at Twickenham and celebrating madly with Ellis Genge. Then Sebastian Negri, Italy’s flanker, clamped me around the torso and twisted me sideways out of a ruck. My knee buckled; the medial collateral ligament was ruptured, the posterior cruciate ligament was torn and the cartilage damaged. For weeks after my four-hour operation I was haunted by the sound.
It has been 53 weeks since I begged for pain relief on the turf at Twickenham, 53 weeks since I sat in the medical room, crying as I spoke to my girlfriend, Megan, and my parents. “I am so sorry it has happened again,” I said to them. I knew how bad it
was because I had suffered a similar injury to my right knee in 2018, which ruled me out of England’s tour to South Africa.
Hand on heart, there have been times when I thought I would not make it back. There were times when I questioned whether I even wanted to make it back, days when I thought, “I am done with it now”.
But 53 weeks later here I am, back in the Wasps team for our trip to play Harlequins in the Gallagher Premiership and my mindset is so different. All that pain, anger, doubt and frustration has been replaced by a boyish energy and excitement. It is going to be special, even more so because my brother, Tom, is back playing too after a concussion lay-off. I am so ready to go.
Lee Blackett, my director of rugby at Wasps, pulled me to one side to let me know I would be on the bench. I said: “I want to play for as long as I possibly can.” He said: “Settle down, mate. You have been out for a long time, just get your head right, get out there and we’ll get you going.”
As I reflected over everything I have been through over the past 53 weeks, it stirred up a lot of emotions. What broke me early on was the everyday soreness. For months I wasn’t concerned about when I would play rugby again. I was more bothered about when I would be able to get out of bed without my knee killing me, when I could take my dog for a walk without my knee swelling up. I got over that stage of the recovery process but it can be incredibly frustrating. You push and push and push in training but do not see the returns that you want. Then I hit a brick wall.
The more you push, the more chance there is of the injury swelling. You are always trying to find that right balance and I had two significant flare-ups. After the first one, in September, I had my knee drained, I had a cortisone injection and they put Ostinol on the joint, which is a bit like WD-40.
After a really positive week of rehabilitation over in Dublin, I overdid it with my running, the swelling returned and I hit another brick wall. I just thought, “What is the point? I am not getting anywhere with this”.
My surgeon said to me that if it happened again I would need another operation to avoid long-term damage to my knee. That was when I was thinking, “Do I really want to do that? Do I really want to go back to the beginning?” That was in December — but that month was a massive turning point for me. I was trying to draw on every last ounce of motivation to keep going when my son, Enzo, arrived.
Sponsored
He distracted me straight away. Instead of getting home from training and fretting over how sore my knee was, I was straight into feeding and changing dirty nappies.
It gave me such a boost. It put my whole life into perspective. I wanted him to watch me play. I realised that I only had one shot at this career and I needed to hang on to it for as long as I could.
I slowed things down with my rehabilitation and threw away any recovery timetable. Just making it back on the field at all became the target. I went back to building up the core strength in my knee, went back to running in anti-gravity machines to reduce the impact and did everything to nullify the risk of swelling. It has worked. I have been back training with the boys now for three weeks and I am as confident as I can be in my knee and I have been working hard to get my mind right.
If I don’t jackal for the ball at a ruck when I come back, if I don’t do the things I used to do, then what is the point? I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t scared.
As I wrote in a previous column, my first real emotional meltdown came when Christophe Ridley, the RFU referee, came into our pre-season camp and explained the law changes for this season.
World Rugby has outlawed players from dropping their weight onto the lower limbs of an opponent but there was no mention of the crocodile roll technique that led to my injury.
I have not seen anyone get done for a crocodile roll since the laws changed. There’s still plenty happening — but I think I’ve prepared myself. I’ve had team-mates deliberately croc-rolling me in a fairly controlled way so that I’ve got the mechanisms, mentally and physically, to cope with it.
I asked Ben Harris, our 20-stone prop, to help me so he could replicate some of the bigger guys I will come up against. At first he would tell me which way he was going to roll and then we made it unpredictable.
It was a pretty nervy session but it has certainly built some confidence. I am in a better position physically than before I was injured because I worked so hard on my strength and power while I was out. I now need to play to build up that match fitness.
There’s a chance in every collision that you are going to get injured. I’ve got to get on with it and hope that I have paid my dues over the past 53 weeks. I just want to enjoy the next few months of my rugby and feel grateful for being out on the pitch again with the boys and with my brother; and to get a chance to play for Enzo.
I wanted to document my journey to give an insight into the other side of life as a professional athlete, when some of the toughest challenges you face are away from the spotlight.
This, hopefully, is Jack Willis signing off for good.
Topic: Jack Willis Times article (Read 1174 times)
Always a Wasp