GERRY THORNLEYon the miracle that is the Ulster hooker's ahead-of-schedule return to the Ireland starting line-up from a serious neck injury
RORY BEST is set to make his first start for Ireland since captaining the side and scoring a try in the summer win over the USA Eagles in Colorado. That he is even playing rugby again is a minor miracle.
Initially ruled out for the season after an operation to remove a disc from his neck had been designed to give him some leeway, his return for the third round of the Six Nations is a timely boon, both for himself and Ireland.
It was back in pre-season last July when he noticed his neck was becoming stiffer and stiffer. “Then one day it just went,” he recalls. “I was confined to the wooden floor for a week until they came in and gave me a bit of a scan.
“Then they found this disc was bulging. We gave it plenty of time to reduce but it didn’t. So there was only one option really after that.”
Best had the near prolapsed disc removed and his vertebrae fused. He has, by nature, a positive outlook, with every cloud and all that. “Mine was the realisation that finally I could have a bit of time away from playing rugby week in week out; giving me an opportunity to put some size and strength on.
“Playing regularly season to season, you don’t get many windows to do that. I saw that as a big positive. It’s one of those things. There were highs and lows during the recovery process, there always is. But you have to try and stay as positive as possible. I was lucky to have good support, not just from my family and Ulster, but the IRFU were very supportive as well.”
He had privately hoped he’d be back playing before the season was out, but the four-weekly reviews showed no side effects.
“I suppose it was around November that things went really well for me and I started to do a bit more with the neck. Jonny Davis (Ulster’s fitness and conditioning coach) was very good in terms of pushing it within the boundaries he could.”
That his brother Simon had been obliged to retire prematurely was also a sobering reminder of how fickle a player’s career and health can be, although Best candidly admits: “When it doesn’t affect you directly, you take the view of ‘oh well, that was unfortunate but these things happen’.
“It probably doesn’t hit home as hard as it did this summer when I was told this could be the season. Or it might be never again.
“It hits home that while I was very lucky to play 90 odd times for Ulster, 30 odd times for Ireland, there’s suddenly a realisation that that might be it. And it does make you appreciate what you’ve done and what you go through to get there. I suppose you try to savour every moment when you come back.”
Two weeks before the Six Nations, Best made a one-hour comeback for his hometown club, Banbridge, against Barnhall in the AIL.
“With it being my local club, the biggest fear I had was not performing,” he reveals with a smile. “Obviously there was a lot of expectation going back to the club you started playing for.
“In the back of your mind, you know this is the first proper contact since the surgery, but it was probably more the expectation rather than the actual injury itself.”
An impressive return for the Irish Wolfhounds against the English Saxons led to his recall to the Ireland bench against Italy and there was another encouraging 80 minutes for Ulster in Friday’s draw at home to the Dragons.
The defeat in Paris “came as a shock to the system, and there are big lessons to be learned in terms of finer details and being harder on ourselves. It won’t be forgotten until we take to the field”.
He expects an ultra-physical battle and, as with all Six Nations games, detailed knowledge of each other means it will “come down to the fine details. You have to empty the tank, you’re physically and mentally drained because it takes so much out of you to beat a side like England in Twickenham”.
