'Mercurial talent' Smith on ACL injury: 'I was just focusing on trying to keep upright'

Bristol Bears and Scotland playmaker Meryl Smith has opened up on the roller coaster of emotions that she has gone through since suffering an ACL injury 13 months ago.

It has been a tough time for the 24-year-old talent as she missed the whole of the PWR campaign in 2024/25, this year’s Six Nations and, most frustratingly for someone dubbed a “mercurial talent” by former Scottish head coach Bryan Easson, the Rugby World Cup in the summer.

She has also been absent for the start of this year’s league campaign with the Bears, and, while she does not have an exact date in mind for her playing return, she has been in full training for a couple of weeks now and hopes to be back fit and firing for her club and country as soon as she is ready.

Rewind just over a year and, going into the 2024 WXV 2 tournament in South Africa last September and October, Smith was at the height of her powers.

In mid-September last year, off the back of a good first season with the Bears after moving south following the completion of her biological sciences degree at Edinburgh University, she started at stand-off for Scotland against Fiji at Hive Stadium and was named player of the match after a 59-15 win.

This was the team’s 10th win from the last 13 Tests, with the Scots headed to Cape Town looking to defend the WXV 2 title they had won in 2023. Smith started at 12 as they beat Italy 19-0 and at 13 when they beat Japan 19-13.

That set up a ‘winner takes all’ decider versus Australia and Smith came off the bench in the 67th minute for her 22nd cap at a time when the game was going crazy.

Scotland had just lost Emma Orr to a red card, but a Francesca McGhie try soon after Smith entered the fray saw them 22-21 up having been 21-0 down at one stage.

In the end the Scots suffered a sin-binning and Australia won the game 31-22 to lift the trophy.

Smith recounts: “It was a mad game to come into with so much going on and I made a tackle a few minutes after coming on and my right knee pretty much gave way.

“I tried to play on, I think I played maybe 10 minutes after that because it felt ok and we were still chasing the win. I thought I could play on, I thought I was fit enough to keep going and I did my best but, looking back on it now, there was definitely something not right with my knee. Once we got home from South Africa, the knee was quite swollen for a couple of weeks.”

Initially the physios with Bristol and Scotland didn’t think it was anything too major with Smith hoping to be back playing in the PWR in the not too distant future.

“I had my boots in my bag and everything, I was ready to go. Maybe that was a bit of wishful thinking on my part as realistically there was always going to be some sort of period out to get the injury right, but it came as a shock that I’d done my ACL.

“I had a scan and the injury wasn’t showing the usual signs of an ACL – I think it was an unusual mechanism that I had torn it in – so when it was confirmed that it was an ACL it did take me some time to process everything.

“I think with a lot of ACL injuries you can tell almost immediately that that’s what’s happened and I think because that wasn’t the case with mine I was perhaps in denial, but then it began to sink in and I had to get my head around it.”

With a PWR top four to aim for with Bristol and a Six Nations and a World Cup around the corner with Scotland, Smith had lots of things swirling around her mind.

Next on the agenda was surgery in Edinburgh last November with Smith ready for a spell on the sidelines.

“A wee while after the first surgery it was clear that things weren’t quite right and I had to get a second clear out surgery in January,” she explained.

“I was still clinging to the hope that I might make the World Cup around then, but I’d had some pretty honest conversations with Flo [Laing, the Scotland physio] and I knew it was looking unlikely.

“And then I think I probably knew for certain around Six Nations time that it wouldn’t happen for me [getting to a second World Cup having been in New Zealand in 2022] and that was tough.

“I managed to be at peace with the news, but then around the squad announcement in St Andrews for the World Cup when I was watching from afar and seeing all of the media coverage and seeing all of my team mates and friends so happy, it kind of just hit me again what I would be missing and that was a blow.”

Smith was at the Scotland games during the World Cup as a supporter, headed into camp a few times during the showpiece event in England and showed some of her international team mates around Bristol when they were there for their quarter-final to keep her in touch with things.

And while Scotland’s biggest moment of the summer arguably came on August 23rd when they defeated Wales 38-8 in Salford, Smith’s highlight of her own summer had come just over a month before at the Bears High-Performance Centre.

She ran for the first time in nine months and all of her Bristol squad mates made a surprise appearance to cheer her on.

Smith smiles and says: “That was unexpected, but so nice, it was a really lovely surprise. I was so excited to run again, but also absolutely terrified, and they all came out to watch and surprised me.

“That really was my very first run since sustaining the injury and I was just focusing on not falling over and just trying to keep upright and keep moving forward.

“I think we’ve got such a good bond here at Bristol and everyone supports each other just as they do in the Scotland set up…they have all kept me going.

“Rehab can be monotonous and it can be hard to see the end of the tunnel at sometimes so their support was really appreciated by me.

Now back alongside the senior Bristol squad more regularly, recently Smith, who is one of Scottish Rugby’s fully supported players for 2025/26, presented to her Bears team mates about her ‘why’.

“We’ve been making our way through each player and everyone has been presenting about ‘what matters to me’, what motivates you in terms of rugby and what makes you tick as a person,” Smith stated.

“For me it was nice to be able to share what was important to me. It was a lot about playing rugby with my best friends and the enjoyment that I’ve had from the game ever since I was little. Playing at this level is much more serious and structured, but you should always play with fun in mind.

“I also want to keep inspiring the next generation and being in the stands for the World Cup games just reiterated to me how much so many people love women’s rugby.

“I love it too and I cannot wait to be back out there playing when I’m ready.”