Even the strongest of tighthead props occasionally feel powerless. In Dan Cole’s case the moment arrived in February when a routine weights session at England’s training base in Bagshot brought his professional life to a shuddering halt. “I tried to do a bench press in the gym and basically had no power in my left arm,” he says quietly. Only now, 10 months and a significant neck operation later, is he finally beginning to pick up where he left off.
As he reels off the names of other Leicester players who have been successfully operated on by his renowned neck and spinal surgeon Peter Hamlyn – Tom Croft, Geoff Parling, Tom Youngs, Miles Benjamin etc – the brutal nature of his chosen trade becomes clearer still. Relatively speaking, Cole is one of the lucky ones but it is hard to feel that way when your colleagues are running around and you are lying at home wondering if, at 27, things will ever be quite the same again.
With a World Cup looming, Cole had even more reason for reflection. One minute he was England’s unshakeable first-choice at tighthead; the next, despite having missed only one of his country’s previous 45 Tests, he was on the outside looking in. Toughest of all was watching England play in New Zealand in the summer, with Davey Wilson starting at tighthead.
“I did feel a bit sad,” he says, recalling the June mornings on his sofa during the post-operative period when he was barred from doing any exercise. “It was massively boring. Everyone says: ‘Why don’t you go away travelling?’ but you can’t just sod off abroad for three months. I’m not really a beach person anyway.”
In retrospect Cole suspects it was an accident waiting to happen. He first experienced a pain in his neck after Leicester’s home defeat to Ulster in January – “When I woke up the next morning I was even more stiff than usual” – and, following his Bagshot breakdown, a scan revealed a bulging disc in his neck around his C6 and C7 vertebrae.
“Sometimes you can prang a nerve and it weakens for a couple of weeks before coming back,” he says. “You don’t really want to have surgery on your neck so I went to a specialist who recommended three months of rest to try to let the bulge settle. It didn’t really do anything so they operated in May.”
Even at that stage the decision to undergo surgery was still a weighty one for an international prop forward, given the delicacy of the area involved. Cole’s maternal grandfather was a Cumbrian coal miner who broke his back in a pit accident; no Leicester player will ever need reminding of the life-changing neck injury suffered by another Tigers prop, the remarkable Matt Hampson.
“I understand the forces that come through your neck,” Cole says quietly. “You don’t really want to mess around with it but the specialist who operated on me, Peter Hamlyn, knows sports people. That’s reassuring because it’s your livelihood. He’s also already operated on half the Leicester team; seeing them come back and play you know you’ll be all right.”
Nevertheless, it has been a long, lonely process. “I had three months before the operation and three months afterwards when you’re not supposed to activate your neck muscles to give the disc the best chance to recover. I was doing pretty much zero: just sitting around.
“Your daily routine is gone so you’ve basically got nothing to get up for in the morning. I would wander in, look at a bit of video, sit in a team meeting and eat a free lunch. It’s tough when the boys are going through pre-season or when things are going wrong and you can’t really do anything about it.”
Nagging away, too, has been the knowledge the game never stands still. Even before his injury Cole was being forced to come to terms with the changing dynamics of the scrum, the lawmaker’s efforts to reduce the initial hit having given crafty looseheads a new lease of life. Cole is not naturally given to hyperbole – “You still have to bend over and push” – but he believes the tighthead’s job has changed appreciably. “I think the tighthead has gone from more of a pure attacking role under the old regulations, where you’d hit and chase, to more of a defensive role.
“They’ve closed the gap between the front rows and, as a tighthead, you’ve got no momentum to fire through the scrum. You’re more static and you have a greater responsibility to win your own ball. The value [you bring] has gone from being an attacking penalty machine to being defensive and not giving away penalties. I played under the rules last year, so it’s not a total change, but people are more used to it this year. It’s just a question of getting out there and doing it again.”
To complicate life still further, Leicester’s next three games are home and away European ties with defending champions Toulon followed by a Premiership derby against last season’s champions Northampton. Some key Tigers players are returning but, as Cole freely admits, his first foray back against Sale Sharks last month was a step into the unknown. “Before the game there was a bit of nervousness, not about the neck but about being crap. You’ve been out for 10 months and you don’t have a clue,” he says. “Thankfully I got thrown straight into a scrum and after that you’re on autopilot. You just get on with the game.”
The next challenge is to force his way back into an England starting pack who have been gathering in strength in his absence. “In terms of pure set-piece, lineout ball, scrum, there aren’t many better,” nods Cole approvingly. “You look at that pack and it’s going to be hard for anyone to get back in.”
Which makes Leicester’s match with mighty Toulon on Sunday all the more important for England’s returning pillar. “You can come across international packs but it’s very rare you come across an international squad from one to 23. In some ways, it could be tougher than a Test match,” he says.
Happily, if the resilient Cole has mastered one skill in 2014, it is staying strong in adversity.
