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Rosie Galligan column: Bed pans, morphine, and the rehab bandwagon
The last week has been quite tough in all honesty, not being able to drive and being stuck with a 60-degree angle on your leg is a lot harder than you imagine. I’ve had lots of people come and visit; my mum, sister and my partner making sure I’m well fed and watered.
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Tuesday was my first day out the house, one-week post-operation. I got a taxi to Surrey Sports Park to be at Harlequins and I saw my physio for the first time who cleaned my wound and ran me through the next 12 weeks of my comeback, which is exciting. I know time is a healer and now I’m back on the rehab bandwagon. I’m now able to set myself small targets with the hope to be up and moving around by the end of April.
It was good being in the gym for the first time. I’m allowed to do an upper body session and a single lower leg session on my good leg. I have also been given some glute bridges to do on both legs and I can start to use the compex (an electric machine that gets your muscles twitching), on my bad side.
It’s a big step today as I know if I do these exercises really well now, then it’s going to help me in the weeks to come. Sometimes with rehab you can take the easy route and do the bare minimum, but I want to get back as soon as I can in the best shape.
It’s nice to be back at club, when my physio was changing my dressing I had a group of players come in to look at my scar, (I had a three C distal T-junction tear,) and team mates such as Emily Chancellor have been great with picking me up and taking me out for coffee. It was good to also catch up with others who are injured such as Jade Konkel Roberts and Sarah Bonar.
Harlequins Women have two full time physios and part-time staff so there’s a lot of well qualified hands to look after me whilst England concentrate on the Six Nations.
On the day of my operation, I went in at half six in the morning and was seen by half eight. It was a really quick two hours, got into my gown, chose my food for after surgery which was a tuna mayo and sweetcorn sandwich and packet of crisps and I demolished it when I came out!
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They put me under, as soon as I woke up in the recovery area, I rang my mum to let her know I was awake. I woke up desperate for the toilet and had my first experience using a bed pan which was interesting. The nurses were shocked that I remembered her phone number! I was on double morphine and other painkillers- but I’m not in pain and have managed to wean myself off the drugs I was on within a couple of days.
England have had a great campaign so far in the Six Nations despite the long list of missing players. We had a really long season going into the World Cup and I think there’s a few different factors as to why there’s a lot of injuries but it’s part and parcel of playing elite sport.
The good thing is, England have the strength in depth to put on some quality rugby and still win games. There’s a lot of new faces and opportunity and Mids (England Head Coach Simon Middleton) knows there’s a pool of around 50 people he can chose from nowadays.
I think England took their game up another level against Italy. There was some exiting play with our back three getting on the ball and just showed how Holly Aitchison is controlling the ropes at ten and has come into her own in that position. She’s got that kicking factor and plays to the line and puts defences under different kinds of pressure that they’re not used to with other tens. We need to keep building and playing this exciting brand of rugby.
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Wales have showcased what they can do now they’re a more professional set up and are looking like one of the bigger threats in the tournament. They have a big heavy forward pack and some talented players who play across the Premier 15s. Hopefully England will have a few more players back from injury and can put the game away in front of a record crowd at Cardiff Arms Park next weekend.
The RFU’s tickets sales for the final round against France at Twickenham is incredible. They are set to break the world record set at the World Cup final at Eden Park.
There are still doubters out there, but we are proving how good women’s rugby is and how good the Six Nations is, and the amount of media attention is growing and little details like being able to watch all games on the BBC are converting into ticket sales.
For the next month now, all of England Rugby’s ticketing and marketing strategy will be centred around that Twickenham game, and I can’t wait to be involved as a fan and as a team mate.
Comments on RugbyPass
Dagg is still trying to get enough headlines to make himself relevant enough to get a job. The Crusaders went back to square one at all levels. Shelve this season and nail the next one.
4 Go to commentsHe was in such great form. Sad for him but only a short term injury and it will be great to see him back for the finals.
1 Go to commentsAfter their 5/0 start, I had the Crusaders to finish Top 4 only…they lost the plot in Perth but will reload and back themselves vs 4th placed Rebels…
3 Go to commentsBoth nations missed a great opportunity to book a game that would have had a lot of interest from around the world. I understand these games can’t be organised in 5 minutes but they should have found a way to make it happen. I don’t think Wales are ducking anyone but it’s a bad look haha.
3 Go to commentsIt will be fascinating to see the effect that Jo Yapp has. If they can compete with Canada and give BFs a run for their money that will be progress
1 Go to commentsFollowing his dream and putting in the work. Go well young fella!
3 Go to commentsPerhaps filling Twickenham is one of Mitchell’s KPIs. I doubt whether both September matches will be at Twickenham on consecutive weekends. I would take the BF one to a large provincial stadium so as not to give them the advantage and experience of playing at Twickenham before a large crowd prior to the RWC.
3 Go to commentsvery unfortunate for Kitshoff, but big opportunity potentially for Nché to prove he is genuinely the best loosehead in the world, rather than just a specialist finisher. Presuming that if Kitshoff is out, it will also give Steenekamp a chance to come into the 23? Or are others likely to be ahead of him?
1 Go to commentsA long held question in popular culture asks if art imitates life or does the latter influence the former? Over this 6 nations I can ask the same question of the media influencing the thoughts of its audience or vice versa. Nobody wants to see cricket scores in rugby, as a spectacle it is not sustainable. With so many articles about England’s procession and lack of competition it feeds the epicaricacy of many looking for an opportunity to pounce. England are not the first team to dominate nor does it happen only in rugby, think Federer, Nadal, Red Bull or Mercedes, Manchester Utd, Australia in tests and World Cups. Instead of celebrating the achievements why find reasons to falsify it pointing towards larger playing pool, professional for a longer period or mitigate with the lack of growth in other nations. Can we not enjoy it while it is here and know that it won’t last for ever, others coveting what England have will soon take the crown, ask the aforementioned?
6 Go to commentsShame he won’t turn out for the Netherlands now they’re improving. U20s are Euro champs and in the U20 Trophy this year. The senior sides gets better every year too.
3 Go to commentsWill rugbypass tv be showing these games?
1 Go to commentsWell where do you start, the fact that England have a professional domestic league and Ireland’s is fully amatuer, that they have fully seperated professional squads at Fifteens and Sevens (7’s thinly disguised as GB), and Ireland have fully pro Sevens squad who loan some players back to the Semi-Professional Fifteens squad (moved from amateur for only a year or so) for a few games at 6N & RWC’s. The Women’s games is a shambles, and is at risk of killing itself by pushing for professionalism when the market isn’t really there to support it outside one or two countnries..
6 Go to commentsWayne Smith's input didn't have as much impact on the last final as Davison's red card for Thompson. England were 14 points up and flying when that happened.
6 Go to commentsBilly's been playing consistently well for 2 - 3 seasons now and deserves a look in at the top level. Ioane and ALB are still first choice but there needs to be injury cover and succession. His partnership with Jordie gives him first dibs you'd think. Go the Hurricanes.
3 Go to commentsIt’s not up to Wales to support Georgian Rugby. That’s up to International Rugby and Georgia. I sympathise with Georgia’s decent attempt to create this fixture. But for Wales the proposed match up is just a potential stick to beat them with and a potential big psychological blow that young Welsh team doesn’t need. (I’m Irish BTW.)
3 Go to commentsCale certainly looks great in space, but as you say, he has struggled in contact. At 23 years old, turning 24 this year, he should be close to full physical maturity and yet there exists a considerable gap in the power and physicality required for international rugby. Weight doesn’t automatically equate to power and physicality either. Can he go from a player who’s being physically dominated in Super rugby to physically dominating in international rugby in 1 or 2 years? That’s a big ask but he may end up being a late bloomer.
36 Go to commentsIf rugby wants to remain interesting in the AI era then it will need to work on changing the rules. AI will reduce the tactical advantage of smart game plans, will neutralize primary attacking weapons, and will move rugby from a being a game of inches to a game of millimetres. It will be about sheer athleticism and technique,about avoiding mistakes, and about referees. Many fans will find that boring. The answer is to add creative degrees of freedom to the game. The 50-22 is an example. But we can have fun inventing others, like the right to add more players for X minutes per game, or the equivalent of the 2-point conversion in American football, the ability to call a 12-player scrum, etc. Not saying these are great ideas, but making the point that the more of these alternatives you allow, the less AI will be able to lock down high-probability strategies. This is not because AI does not have the compute power, but because it has more choices and has less data, or less-specific data. That will take time and debate, but big, positive and immediate impact could be in the area of ref/TMO assistance. The technology is easily good enough today to detect forward passes, not-straight lineouts, offside at breakdown/scrum/lineout, obstruction, early/late tackles, and a lot of other things. WR should be ultra aggressive in doing this, as it will really help in an area in which the game is really struggling. In the long run there needs to be substantial creativity applied to the rules. Without that AI (along with all of the pro innovations) will turn rugby into a bash fest.
24 Go to commentsSouth Africa rarely play Ireland and France on these tours. Mostly, England, Scotland and Wales. I wonder why
2 Go to commentsIt was a let’s-see-what-you're-made-of type of a game. The Bulls do look good when the opposition allows them to, but Munster shut them down, and they could not find a way through. Jake should be very worried about their chances in the competition.
2 Go to commentsHats off to Fabian for a very impressive journey to date. Is it as ‘uniquely unlikely’ as Rugby Pass suggests, given Anton Segner’s journey at the Blues?
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