Tom Curry awaiting Harley Street verdict after latest injury setback

Sale boss Alex Sanderson has revealed he is awaiting a specialist opinion from London on the severity of the latest injury setback suffered by Tom Curry. The England back-rower has yet to feature in the Gallagher Premiership since his return to Manchester following his country’s third-place finish last month at the Rugby World Cup in France.

Curry went into that tournament with an ankle injury that prevented him from featuring in any of the four-game Summer Nations Series.

He was then red-carded just three minutes into the tournament opener versus Argentina in Marseille on September 9 but he returned in October to play a crucial part in the matches versus Samoa, Fiji, South Africa and Argentina, culminating in a bronze medal win on October 27.

Eighteen days on from that Stade de France victory, Curry has now visited a specialist in London’s Harley Street to check on the extent of the hip injury that has prevented him from making his first appearance of the club season in England with Sale.

“I’m waiting on a specialist assessment on his hip,” explained Sanderson on Tuesday afternoon when hosting his club’s weekly media briefing ahead of this Friday’s league clash versus Newcastle at the AJ Bell. “He has got a dicky hip, that’s the medical term for it.

“He came in (from the World Cup) and was alright but as soon as we trained with any intensity he stiffened up and it took us a while to free him up again and these are some chronic micro-tears in his labrum. So of them chronic, maybe one or two of them from the World Cup.

“We have to wait and see until this specialist tells us exactly what he has done and how he has done it and what kind of rehabilitation and treatment he needs.

“I’m not giving you anything clear because I don’t know myself, but it could be as little as a couple of weeks to rehab it because it has shown up well this week; it could be a lot longer depending on how much wear and tear there might be on his bone.

“He was in Harley Street this morning. I have had a missed call from our head of medical whilst I have been in meetings upstairs and I have run straight from that straight down to here because I knew I was late for you guys [the media], so I haven’t heard.”

Whatever the length of this latest setback in an injury-hit 2023 for Curry, Sanderson is backing the 25-year-old to bounce back. “I don’t think anyone who trains and plays like he does is ever going to avoid some kind of achilles heel, that’s about the best way you can put it and I mean that in the metaphorical sense.

“It’s human. Something is going to give at some point and he has to manage it. How you manage it – and every club player goes through an injury crisis – will determine the longevity of his career moving forward, so that is the key and we have spoken about that.

“This is not tragic, this is not career-ending by any stretch, but it is another speed bump in what has been a really bumpy road for him this year. He has got to get over that but let’s look at this injury in isolation and not feel like you are tainted with bad luck because that is what it could feel like for him and then he can get down and all that stuff.

“It will turn, his luck will turn. We will put Humpty Dumpty back together again, you will see him soon enough, hopefully by Christmas, and then we will take the long-term effect of this as and when we find them.”

Being sidelined once more will surely test the mental resolve of Curry. Sanderson, though, offered up the inspiring story of his own older brother Pat from the mid-noughties as evidence that things can change for the better for Curry in the long run.

“I don’t work too closely on the psychological side with Tom because he wants to keep that separate from the conversations we have with him around his performance, but I know he does work hard on it. I did have a conversation with him and from personal experience is the best way you can talk or discuss these things.

“Like my brother got injured for two years at Quins, both ankles operated on, got his contract struck off, said please just give me the money to live off which they did, got back into the side, got players’ player of the year the year after that and captained England the year after that.

“That happening to people by one degree of separation from me left me to say, ‘Tom, this is just part of your journey’. So I can speak to him in that sense and hopefully try and calm him down because human nature is to think the worst, this is happening again and it’s spiraling. Well actually no, you’re not alone here.

“That is the nature of the conversation I had with him last week and I’m certainly going to be in his plans long term because whatever future treatment he needs we have to be strategic on that if he does need it. We spoke about that but on the back of that he just gets on with it.”