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'You could just hear the break' - Lood de Jager details latest 'freak' injury
By Ian Cameron
As injury-ravaged rugby players go, Lood de Jager is right up there, and the giant Springbok second row has detailed exactly how his most recent injury happened, on his birthday of all days.
De Jager broke his tibia, damaged his ankle tore the medial meniscus in his knee clean off the bone in the most recent in a string of nasty injuries to befall the lock since the 2019 Rugby World Cup. The injury has all but ended his hopes of facing the British and Irish Lions this summer.
Speaking to Jamie Lyall in a wide-ranging interview published on TheXV, De Jager explained how his most recent 'mishap' occurred.
“It was a freak accident. I was jumping for the ball, landed awkwardly with my studs in the ground and a guy fell on it. You could just hear the break. My first reaction was, I jumped up and just shouted, ‘No!’ twice. Hard. Loud. I was shocked. Especially with my injury history.
“I’d worked really hard to get back from my shoulder injury, get back in the rhythm again, play a couple of games and get my confidence back, and then this happens.”
“That night wasn’t great. I had a chat with our physio at 9pm and he told me, ‘Listen, this is serious, you’re probably going to be out for a long time’. To give him credit, he said that he wasn’t a specialist, and we’d see what the doctor said the next morning. But that night, a thousand things were going through my head."
His awful injury luck has even made him question how his life might be effected once he's finished with the game.
"You just question how many times can you go through this,” he says. “There’s life after rugby as well. With my shoulders, I want to be able to throw a ball to my kids and do the normal day-to-day things. But luckily with how the procedures are, they told me there was no need to panic, that a couple of other rugby players have had the same thing happen to them.”
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Latest Comments
The boy needs to bulk up if wants to play 10 or 11 to handle those hits, otherwise he could always make a brilliant reserve for the wings if he stays away from the stretcher.
Go to commentsIn another recent article I tried to argue for a few key concept changes for EPCR which I think could light the game up in the North.
First, I can't remember who pointed out the obvious elephant in the room (a SA'n poster?), it's a terrible time to play rugby in the NH, and especially your pinnacle tournament. It's been terrible watching with seemingly all the games I wanted to watch being in the dark, hardly able to see what was going on. The Aviva was the only stadium I saw that had lights that could handle the miserable rain. If the global appeal is there, they could do a lot better having day games.
They other primary idea I thuoght would benefit EPCR most, was more content. The Prem could do with it and the Top14 could do with something more important than their own league, so they aren't under so much pressure to sell games. The quality over quantity approach.
Trim it down to two 16 team EPCR competitions, and introduce a third for playing amongst the T2 sides, or the bottom clubs in each league should simply be working on being better during the EPCR.
Champions Cup is made up of league best 15 teams, + 1, the Challenge Cup winner. Without a reason not to, I'd distribute it evenly based on each leauge, dividing into thirds and rounded up, 6 URC 5 Top14 4 English. Each winner (all four) is #1 rank and I'd have a seeding round or two for the other 12 to determine their own brackets for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. I'd then hold a 6 game pool, home and away, with consecutive of each for those games that involve SA'n teams. Preferrably I'd have a regional thing were all SA'n teams were in the same pool but that's a bit complex for this simple idea.
That pool round further finalises the seeding for knockout round of 16. So #1 pool has essentially duked it out for finals seeding already (better venue planning), and to see who they go up against 16, 15,etc etc. Actually I think I might prefer a single pool round for seeding, and introduce the home and away for Ro16, quarters, and semis (stuffs up venue hire). General idea to produce the most competitive matches possible until the random knockout phase, and fix the random lottery of which two teams get ranked higher after pool play, and also keep the system identical for the Challenge Cup so everthing is succinct. Top T2 side promoted from last year to make 16 in Challenge Cup
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