‘I was just in tears’ – Tom Curry details horrific injury after defying surgeon’s prediction

Tom Curry has revealed how he was faced with the dreaded prospect of retirement as he battled against a career-threatening hip injury.

The Sale and England flanker, 26, underwent a six-hour operation on a complex hip problem after last year’s Rugby World Cup third-place play-off win against Argentina.

Curry described the damage to his hip as “a car crash” but he returned to action towards the end of last season for Sale and went on England’s summer tour of Japan and New Zealand.

When Sale physio Navdeep Sandhu phoned Curry with his initial scan results, though, it left him facing the nightmare scenario of being forced to hang up his boots.

Close to retiring

Speaking about the traumatic injury ordeal for the first time, Curry recalled: “Nav rang me and listed off all the things that were wrong and I was just in tears.

“I had a Zoom meeting with the surgeon and he said: ‘You are probably going to retire’.

“It was horrible, I literally just cried and curled up into a ball because I couldn’t really process it.

“It is like the five stages of grief. The hardest thing was the getting over it.”

Detailing how he sustained the injury, Curry added: “It was at the World Cup, it felt like it was the last two or three weeks.

“It was something that just wasn’t going away and I’d spend the gym sessions just stretching, thinking it was just a tight muscle.

“But there would be times when walking would just jab me really painfully, you’d go bed, wake up and it would feel a bit better.

“You’d go through that process of stretching and activating it and once it got back it would just go and it just never really went.

“It got worse and I’d finish training sessions and be down for breakfast the next day and I’d be walking at a 45-degree angle.

“For me, at the time, it felt normal but looking back it’s like, ‘OK, that wasn’t good’.

“And that’s what I mean in terms of you look at yourself now and think if that was me now I wouldn’t do that, I’d reduce my load, take a breath.”

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Struggles at the World Cup

Despite playing well at the World Cup, the pain was intensifying as Curry explained: “I’d get to 70 minutes and then it would hurt, 60, then in the bronze final it was 55.

“It was getting worse and worse. I think we had a week or two off, then I came back to training, finished one session and thought, ‘This isn’t right’. Sale decided we were going to get a scan.”

Leading hip surgeon, Professor Damian Griffin, performed what was described as one of his most challenging operations ever on Curry at Harley Street Specialist Hospital.

Crucially, it was a success and, as he began the gruelling rehab process, Curry spoke to other players who had undergone the same procedure.

He explained: “I spoke to Sean O’Brien, Mike Haley and Ollie Devoto and Sam Simmonds a bit. I especially leaned on Sean and Mike a lot. They were brilliant for me.

“Sean gave me a lot of hope and said that he played the most rugby that he ever played for the last five to six years of his career in his last season and this is after he had the replacement.

“He says he plays now as an amateur and he feels like a 20-year-old. I think that gave me a lot of confidence.

“Then you see Sam Simmonds playing a lot. Mike Haley says he jumps out of bed and he is absolutely fine.

“There’s not a lot of research (on hip injuries) and I think that is the tough bit.

“Let’s say you do your ACL and you could go to thousands of rugby players. You do this and there’s three or four.

“You are flying blind but I am so lucky to have to people I am surrounded with that you are able to take everything out and focus on the rehab.

“There were three options: one was to do what I have done, the second was replacement, the third option was leave it and retire, but you are not going to do that.”

Family support

The support from his girlfriend Lilla Powell, parents and twin brother Ben helped keep him sane during the recovery process.

Curry said: “Every sportsperson will say they have difficult times like this but I think for me I wouldn’t be sat here if it wasn’t for my girlfriend.

“She’s been brilliant. That’s the main thing. You come in here and that’s probably the easy bit in terms of the rehab because you have got stuff that you can work on and stuff you can get better at.

“It is when you are away and you are walking around where you feel it. It is the day-to-day living. She was brilliant in terms of helping me around that side.”

The expert guidance of Sandhu at Sale was also crucial as Curry explained: “We had quite a few injured lads last year at Sale so we had a good group of us.

“Nav was brilliant, we think the same. I’d make a joke every now and again about retirement and he’d tell me to ‘f*** off’.

“We were very much aligned, he got me to Loughborough, his eye for detail is brilliant, he had very high standards for me.

“My hip was everything to me, so to have someone like Nav, it felt like it was everything to him, and I know that sounds selfish. But it really helped me through, to be able to trust him was a massive thing for me at the time.

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“The relief was when I could run again but the bigger relief was being able to do the day-to-day stuff, like being able to go for a dog walk and not limping.

“My parents were a huge factor in being able to get me to the position I am today. They took me in and I slept at theirs in the front room for two weeks whilst I was recovering from the surgery.

“I think the energy bill went up £200 or 300 over that period as I kept the heating on all day and night!”

Curry is understandably close to his brother and fellow Sale and England flanker Ben, adding: “He’s been good.

“I think watching him play so well and being able to get back into the England set-up was pretty inspirational.

“All the personal stuff between me and him will be like in terms of just watching how he is, he doesn’t have to say anything. You just see how he is around the club and who he is.

“I think that’s more than enough to inspire you, to get you back and be excited about getting back into the game.”

Another surgery likely

Curry accepts he will probably need another surgery at some point but he is fully fit ahead of Sale’s Premiership opener at home to Harlequins on Sunday.

Curry said: “At some point in my lifetime I probably will, so I can’t tell you now. We will just have to see. For me it’s just a day-to-day thing, the biggest thing for me is prehab stuff.

“Obviously not hindering myself like I probably did before in the gym and training-wise.

“I’m not saying I’m not working hard but working smarter, being more specific with my gym work, with the prehab, conditioning the smaller muscles around the hip just so everything is moving well and then probably gyming afterwards, so I get the most out of training out of my legs but that is before I gym.

“So it’s just tiny little things like that make a big difference. Yes I will need surgery at some point, I have no idea when that is.

“I’m 26 now, until when I die, there will be another surgery, I don’t know when that’s going to be, we’ll just have to see.

“In terms of my workload this year, it’s just about taking every day as it comes – but no way will I change how I play the game.”

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