'I literally just cried. I curled up into a ball'

Tom Curry feared a hip injury would end his career but the Sale and England flanker is back after gruelling recovery

-  Gerard Meagher

Tom Curry walks into the boardroom at Sale's training ground with a spring in his step.

He sits down to give T chapter and verse on his brush with retirement, the debilitating hip injury that required six-hour surgery and his gruelling recovery with an openness you would not always associate with one of rugby's most intense operators. He soon speaks of the five stages of grief and, after 45 minutes in his company, it is clear that Curry has reached acceptance.

To recap, Curry was feeling discomfort in his hip towards the back end of England's World Cup campaign last year. It did not take long after returning to Sale to discover that "something wasn't right" and the subsequent scan delivered a prognosis that floored him. "I had a Zoom with the surgeon and he said you are probably going to retire," says Curry, still just 26.

"I literally just cried. I curled up into a ball. I just couldn't really process it. It was a surreal moment.

But you just have to go through those raw emotions then process it all. My biggest thing - the hardest bit was getting to the surgery. I had three weeks until the surgery and I couldn't really do anything.

You are limping around, you have retirement in your head and you're being useless to everyone." The road to recovery was a slog and went via Loughborough where Curry had to "learn to run again" before he could even think about returning to the field. "It's the day-to-day stuff, like being able to go for a dog walk and not limping. That's the big relief, those small tasks, because I was almost getting into a habit of limping.