It is not exactly an emotional implosion – Courtney Lawes is from the glowering school of lock forwards, after all. But, after an interview delving through the physical trauma of life in the second row, the question of how much benefit there might be in a 25-game limit to a player’s season is met with a palpable sigh of longing.
“Considerable,” he says, his massive, square shoulders slumping, as if letting out a breath. “Honestly. If you play less games, you are not going to be anywhere near as battered. You can have a lot more time to work on things you want to work on. You would be a considerably better player.”
And then, because he is a lock forward of the glowering school, he sits up again and says: “But part of the challenge is how well you manage yourself through the season.”
He need not worry. There is no danger of anyone thinking he’s going soft. Quite the contrary. The transcript of the preceding interview might serve as the starting point for a medical conference. And Lawes is relatively lucky, injury-wise, which is where the sheer number of games comes in. If a rugby player finds himself enjoying a meaningful break these days, it’s usually because he is injured.
Since Lawes began his first-class career as a 19-year-old seven years ago he has played 209 matches for Northampton and England, excluding pre-season friendlies. After his breakthrough in 2008-09, his season tallies read as follows: 33, 28 (six-week knee injury in January and February), 20 (five-week knee injury in January, followed by a season-ending shin injury at the end of February), 32, 34 and 23 (nine-week ankle injury in January and February). When he runs out against Italy in Rome on Sunday afternoon it will be his 15th game of this season, although he has suffered injuries in this one already.
“I have always been unlucky with my knees,” he says. “I did my left knee in the World Cup, then came back and did my right knee [in his second game back, against Sale] – and that is just bad luck. I strap my right knee heavily now. And then I did my right hamstring [in England training the week before last], which is why it was heavily strapped at the weekend. But my knees are fine – I have got nothing to worry about.”
Last season was a hard one for him. His shoulders were giving him such grief that it was affecting his game. Virtually every time he made a tackle, he was suffering from what they call a stinger. “You can’t use your arm for a couple of seconds. It is quite a painful experience. You can get different kinds of pain with them. For me, it just shut off my arm.”
Which is a problem, if tackling is what you are really good at. “It was really tough. Because I was as fit as I could be, but I couldn’t do what I would normally do. It was quite hard for me mentally, to put your body on the line when you know you are going to hurt yourself. It was a rough patch, half a season or whatever it was, but I got through it and did what I could.”
The two or three weeks off he had at the end of last season, followed by extra strength work in the World Cup camp, were enough to sort out the problem. His shoulders now feel “as good as they have done”, and he has his confidence back on the physicality front. Nevertheless, he concedes that he is always likely to have problems with one or the other of his shoulders, until they are addressed, possibly with surgery. If only rugby wouldn’t keep getting in the way.
“It’s finding the time. Because you play week in week out, you’ve got to recover from each game. Your shoulders are sore for most of the week, and you don’t have a lot of time to get them back up to where they need to be for the next one. So it is a downhill cycle.”
Player welfare remains a controversial subject, at least so in England and France. According to the EPS agreement, which runs out at the end of this season, players in the elite squad must play no more than 32 matches a season, where a match is defined as 40 or more minutes. If the case of Lawes is anything to go by – and it is highly unlikely to be exceptional – not to mention the fortunes of England on the field lately, the cap of 32 matches a season ought to be scrutinised closely before a new deal is signed. We are, after all, eight years on from when the current deal was struck.
Lawes will not play any part in the decision making, nor will any of his kind. When asked if he ever shares his thoughts on the subject with the powers that be, we are treated to another chink in the glowering armoury. “Do I?” he practically laughs. “No. I’m not fussed. Someone puts a challenge in front of you, you take it.”
It is fair to say, Courtney Lawes is not going soft, but he and his mates should be saved from themselves. And you suspect he knows it.
