Saracens statement: Update on the Jackson Wray skull fracture

Saracens have delivered a very upbeat injury update on Jackson Wray, revealing that the skull fracture the back-rower suffered in the January 2 Gallagher Premiership win at Northampton isn’t as severe as was initially feared. A half-time replacement in the match for Billy Vunipola, Wray went on to suffer a 78th-minute clash of heads with one of his own teammates. 

The forward had suffered from a concussion earlier in the season but he apparently heard a crack when the incident occurred and he spent the night in a Northampton hospital having his head scanned before getting discharged and going on to see a specialist late last week. 

Saracens have now revealed the outcome of that medical deliberation and rather than the serious-sounding skull fracture being something draconian that might have ended Wray’s playing career at the age of 31, the expectation is that he will be back in action for his club by the end of February at the latest.   

A statement read: “Saracens can confirm that Jackson Wray has seen a consultant who is happy with the progress made after suffering a fracture to his skull in the recent match against Northampton Saints.

“It is expected that he will be back in action in four to six weeks. Jackson would like to thank everyone for all of their messages following the incident.”

It was on January 5, three days after the injury was sustained at Franklin’s Gardens, when Saracens boss Mark McCall shed light on what had happened to Wray and that he would be seeking out the advice of a specialist. “Although a fractured skull sounds very serious, we have to wait for Jackson to go to the specialist a little bit later in the week just to find out what the repercussions of that are,” explained the coach. 

“He has been in the club the last few days, he is fine in himself. He is moving around the place. He spent the night in hospital on Sunday night, got back to St Albans on Monday and has been around the club the last few days, so we are just waiting for him to go and see the specialist and see what they have to say.

“We’ll let him see the specialist but I assume he is going to be out for a fairly decent period of time. It [the injury] happened with about two minutes to go in the game, just a clash of heads with one of our players. 

“Jackson himself kind of knew, he didn’t feel it was a concussion, he felt it was a crack. He felt there was something different about it. He identified it pretty quickly himself and then once he had said that to the medics the sensible thing was for him to go to the hospital and get it scanned and the scan made it clear that he was right and there was a fracture there.”