“I’ve deleted preseason, so I need to start again.”
That is Courtney Lawes, speaking to James Haskell on The Good, The Bad & The Rugby after 10 days in hospital with a staph infection. He is 37. He came out of England retirement in April for one more World Cup.
Is the comeback over, or is he the one player you never write off? Have your say below.
What did Courtney Lawes come back for?
Sale Sharks announced the deal on 7 April. One year, after two seasons at Brive. The same day Lawes said he was “officially un-retiring” from Test rugby.
He has 105 caps. The last one was the World Cup semi-final in Paris in 2023, which England lost 16-15 to South Africa.
Sale thought he would walk back in. “I’d be surprised if he isn’t” in the squad, director of rugby Alex Sanderson told RugbyPass in September.
England had already told him to wait
The answer from England’s coaches was cooler. In September they said he would have to go “over and above” the players already picked. We wrote then that he had five weeks and no promises.
In late October, The Times reported he was not expected in Steve Borthwick’s training camp.
Then he got ill. He missed Sale’s trip to Bath on 31 October. England beat Australia 45-22 without him.
How long does it take to come back from 10 days in bed?
Nobody has given a date, and Lawes did not try. “I’m still on IV antibiotics till Thursday,” he said. Return to play starts after that.
Ten days in a hospital bed is not ten days off. The lungs go first. Then the legs. He was reminded on the show what the first run back after surgery feels like. You get into it and you are out of breath.
A pre-season is where a forward builds the engine for the whole year. A 37-year-old does not get that back in a fortnight.
So is the England comeback over?
For this autumn it looked over before he got ill. Going by that Times report, he was not in the plans.
The Six Nations is the real question, and it looks too soon. He has to get healthy, then fit, then into Sale’s team, then play well enough to move someone out of England’s pack. That is a lot to do by the new year.
Which leaves the summer, and one season of contract to earn it. He started a World Cup semi-final at 34. Nobody at Sale will write him off.
What those 10 days were like is its own story: three days on paracetamol and a blood reading of 240.
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