A LONG AND winding road that included seemingly never-ending rehab stints to surgery in London led all the way back to Kingspan Stadium and a try-scoring return for Luke Marshall last weekend.
An ACL injury in their Heineken Champions Cup play-off against the Ospreys in May 2018 was just the start of a four-year ordeal plagued by injuries for the 11-times capped centre. That issue, which ruled him out for almost a year, wasn’t even the worst of it, an injury to the same knee in November 2020 keeping him out for 18 months.
His return for Ulster’s tour of South Africa towards the tail end of last season, therefore, was something of a surprise – even to Marshall himself – but it was nonetheless a relief, a chance to throw off the shackles that had hindered him for the previous year-and-a-half and revel being back on the pitch.
The bright sunshine he ran out in in Cape Town and Pretoria were in stark contrast to the dark times he experienced while he was undergoing his many attempts to return from his injury. At more than one point, retirement was an option that he seriously considered.
“Before the surgery on the ACL, there were plenty of times (I considered retirement),” says Marshall honestly.
“The first part of it was frustrating because I didn’t fully rupture the ACL, we tried rehabbing it from November to the end of that first season but to no avail.
“It was frustrating because I was thinking that initially I was thinking I’d be back in a couple of months because it was just a sprained ACL but it just dragged on and people were wondering when you were going to be back that was probably the hardest bit.
“Because it was a tricky one, not fully ruptured but the same one I’d done before (in 2018), initially we didn’t want to go down the surgery route but I just couldn’t get back to train. There wasn’t really an option at that stage, we saw a different surgeon in London and he said ‘let’s do it again.’
“Definitely there were times when I was frustrated and was thinking ‘I’m done here.’”
But he resisted the urge to hang up the boots and kept grinding away in the background, quietly going about his business. There were long days with little reward but, fortunately, life away from the pitch tends to have a correlation with what happens on it, and having a baby to look after at home certainly helped put things into perspective.
“When I did my ACL the second time, I was coming home to a newborn baby. If I was pissed off or frustrated in here, I’d go home and my wife would be ‘here’s the baby, look after it!’” smiles the Ballymena man.
“There wasn’t any chance to get sympathy. That was lucky from that point of view.”
Head coach Dan McFarland has described Marshall as the “heartbeat” of this Ulster team, so it was no real surprise to see him straight back in the starting line-up for last week’s first game of the season against Connacht and playing an integral role in a 36-10 win at Kingspan Stadium.
Sure, Stuart McCloskey is getting all the plaudits for his incredible offload to set his partner under the posts for the opening try, but give Marshall credit for spotting what his inside centre was going for in what he describes as an off the cuff play, while he looked sharp in other exchanges against a dangerous pairing in Tom Daly and Tom Farrell.
Taking the final part of last season off helped in that regard, the South African tour allowing Marshall to get his feet wet again without forcing him to do too much, handing over the reins to the excellent James Hume for the remainder of the campaign.
But now he’s back as fully fit as he’s felt in a long time, perhaps since 2018. And with that comes the growing expectations that he’s going to put the pressure on Hume for that outside centre jersey moving forward.
“All the centres are very competitive, they want to be starting no matter who they are. But we all still get on well together, we all appreciate the strengths of each other,” explains Marshall.
“For me, last season the way James kicked on, when I came back fit it would have been stupid of me to be thinking I was going to be first choice. He was probably the best centre in Ireland last year, he was unlucky to not start or get as much game-time as he would have liked (internationally) but he was brilliant.
“That’s a good thing as well, that we want to push each other on. For me, back fit, I’m thinking if I can get a run of games i can hopefully give Dan some selection issues but worst case scenario I don’t get picked but hopefully it pushes James on because he’s thinking ‘I need to get better because he’s getting better’.
“It won’t make it easier for me not getting picked but at least I’m still pushing things on.”
SCARLETS
15. Ioan Nicholas; 14. Corey Baldwin, 13. Jonathan Davies (captain), 12. Johnny Williams, 11. Ryan Conbeer; 10. Sam Costelow, 9. Gareth Davies; 1. Steff Thomas, 2. Ryan Elias, 3. Javan Sebastian; 4. Vaea Fifita, 5. Sam Lousi; 6. Blade Thomson, 7. Josh Macleod, 8. Sione Kalamafoni.
Replacements: 16. Daf Hughes, 17. Sam O’Connor, 18. Harri O’Connor, 19. Tom Price, 20. Luca Giannini, 21. Kieran Hardy, 22. Dan Jones, 23. Rhys Patchell.
ULSTER
15. Michael Lowry; 14. Aaron Sexton, 13. Luke Marshall, 12. Stuart McCloskey, 11. Jacob Stockdale; 10. Billy Burns, 9. John Cooney; 1. Andy Warwick, 2. Rob Herring, 3. Marty Moore; 4. Alan O’Connor (captain), 5. Kieran Treadwell; 6. Matty Rea, 7. Marcus Rea, 8. Nick Timoney.
Replacements: 16. Declan Moore, 17. Eric O’Sullivan, 18. Tom O’Toole, 19. Sam Carter, 20. Sean Reffell, 21. Dave Shanahan, 22. Angus Curtis, 23. Craig Gilroy.
Referee: AJ Jacobs (South Africa)
