MUNSTER’S TOMMY O’DONNELL said the injury which ruined his World Cup was a freak which wouldn’t happen if the incident was repeated a thousand times.
He fell badly with a couple of players on top of him in a warm-up game in Cardiff in August.
And the Tipperary native admitted he knew his World Cup dream was over the moment the accident happened.
“I fell in the wrong position with two players on my back. My hip had nowhere to go but pop out. A freak accident and completely, it wouldn’t happen again in 1,000 tries, but that is the way the ball bobbles sometimes.
“At the start it looked like it was going to be serious enough. But then once the swelling went down, this thing started to heal up.”
The 28-year-old, who has returned for Munster a couple of months ahead of schedule after dislocating his hip, admitted it was the most painful injury he has suffered.
“When you have something sticking out the back of your hip there and you can’t move one leg from the other, you know it’s pretty serious. I’ve nothing to compare it to but it was the worst I’ve had by far,” he said.
The incident happened at the Millennium Stadium in August and the Tipperary native knew he was in trouble long before the extent of the injury was confirmed at University Hospital Wales.
I landed on my knee, right underneath me, probably more than 90 degrees, and two big Welsh lads — they’re not small lads — came down on me and probably came down on an angle.
“I’m probably blessed it didn’t break, It didn’t do any damage to the acetabulum (hip socket). It was a straight — well it wasn’t straight in and out — but it went straight back in. It was a dislocation.
“From a doctor’s point of view, they were trying to establish blood supply, nerves and to get it back in. Usually with a posterior dislocation there’s a break, so it should just slide in, but they gave it one or two tugs and realised the acetabulum was still intact. They were going to have to take me to anaesthetic and put it back in.
“They tried to push it back in, but you can imagine, you’ve so many muscles around there, everything locked up, your groin, your quad, everything went into spasm, so you’re not moving it. Especially after a 10 week pre-season, those muscles are strong and especially when they go into spasm, they’re not going to budge.”
O’Donnell said that the pain was the worst he ever endured but that the medics worked quickly on him.
“There was a couple of different types of medication given to me so I was in la-la land. When I came back, I was still in pain. But it’s amazing, to go from all that pain… as soon as I came around from the anaesthetic, it was relief.
“I could actually move it. There was a lot of bruising but I knew it wasn’t that bad. There was no break there, that was the positive I guess.”
Missing the World Cup was difficult for a guy with nine caps but he adopted the approach that things could be a lot worse. He didn’t go to any of the matches and tried to be as philosophical as possible.
“When you’re possibly facing six to eight months out, there’s no point replaying every game. The only game that I really struggled with was probably the Argentinian game where the lads were trying hard but things weren’t going our way and obviously with the injuries, that’s that one game where you felt, ‘God, I could have been in there.’
The support and well-wishes were overwhelming. They just kept coming for about five or six days after the injury happened. That got me through a lot of it. It was just the whole positivity and everyone wanting to know how I was and what the status was.
“Even how everyone came together to get me home out of Wales. It wasn’t looking like I was going to be able to get a flight. I wasn’t going to be sitting in an airplane.
“One of the bus companies, their owner, he gave us his own private Range Rover so I could be taken to the ferry. I got a bunk on the ferry and then I was picked up by my dad over in Rosslare.”
Then began the slow road to recovery but he has defied expectations and came on for his 102th appearance for Munster on Sunday night, a couple of months ahead of schedule.
“It’s good to be back and in with the lads. Probably the toughest part in recent weeks in sitting in meetings and knowing that you’re not able to contribute.
Obviously knowing now in the coming weeks that I’ll be able to get back into hopefully the kind of form I was in and help the lads and contribute as much as I can.
He signed a new three-year deal earlier this month and is grateful the way Munster have backed him.
“It’s been my run of bad luck that I’ve been injured when negotiating contracts, but it was a vote of confidence for me in Munster and for Munster in me, to get it done. I’m very happy to have renewed and I’m looking forward to the three years,” added O’Donnell.
