Much more of this and Tom Croft will have started 20 matches in a season for the first time in four years, and only the third time in his career. He will not add to his tally of 18 starts when Leicester host Stade Français in the quarter-finals of the Champions Cup on Sunday, because he is taking a turn on the bench, but when he comes on his appearances for the season will push into the mid-20s. Having turned 30 in November, he’s looking good on it. Is it going too far to suggest, as good as he ever has?
“Let’s not get carried away,” he says, laughing. “Christ, my body feels it. I’m doing a bit more stretching, now I’m the wrong side of 30. It’s just looking after the body, being a bit more professional.”
By anyone’s standards, Croft’s career has already reached the heights – 40 caps for England, another five for the Lions across two tours, one a series-winning affair, multiple trophies with Leicester but he has suffered from injury as much as anyone. While languishing in the early stages of six months of rehabilitation from his latest, a dislocated shoulder, he signed the contract Leicester offered him a year ago, which will see him through till at least the age of 31, and who knows how many more starts. It was a significant gesture by the club, because the last two seasons have seen him start only nine matches for the Tigers.
“I have definitely got my money’s worth from the medical side,” he says of the injuries that have disrupted his career, “and my tape bill per session has gone through the roof to hold my body together. I am very grateful to the club because they could quite justifiably have said you’re done.”
Croft has never looked the sort they keep in the darker corners of Welford Road but what he lacks in glowering menace he more than amply makes up for with his outrageous athleticism, including a ludicrous turn of pace for a 6ft 6in lineout forward – for anyone, really. A show reel of Croft moments would delight even those most indifferent to rugby’s charms. As a 21-year-old, he announced himself to the wider world when he outpaced a centre, full-back and scrum-half of Maori stock on a 60-metre gallop to win the Churchill Cup for the England Saxons in 2007.
“I was never going to be a big 18 or 19st bruiser, which Cockers [Leicester coach Richard Cockerill] hoped I’d have the potential to be when I was 18 years old. Twelve years down the line I’m probably 3kg heavier than I was then. It was a losing battle but as long as the pace doesn’t dwindle, we’ll be all right.”
It is not just about the pace, though. Such is his quality, he was playing a full part in one of the most brutal Lions Test series ever witnessed, in South Africa a mere two years after that Saxons cameo. No one manages that without a certain steel. Flashy outside breaks and photogenic lineout steals may be his defining qualities but 17st of muscle and a competitive edge have earned him admission to the hardest of finishing schools.
But what of those injuries? His worst was a triple fracture of the vertebra he suffered in 2012 that brought him “as close as you can to being paralysed”, according to his specialist. Within five months of his return, he was skinning Aussies in a Lions shirt, plundering their lineouts. First game of the following season, though, he suffered a knee injury that put him out for more or less the rest of the campaign.
If we are worried about the increasing risk for a vaguely regular-sized human being in professional rugby, Croft would make for a poignant case study. This, his first injury-free season for so long, is notable for his lack of international duties. His wife is expecting their second child at the end of June, so his likely absence from any England tours this summer may be welcome for reasons other than the respite his body will enjoy over a decent off-season.
There is no doubt that respite will help. “You could probably say you wish you’d had a bit more time off,” he says, of his career. “I’d never say I wish I hadn’t gone on a tour. Every tour I’ve been on has been a personal mini-achievement. You’d look at how much time off you had. In 2009 I had about three weeks off [after the Lions tour]. Shortly after that, I did my MCL [medial collateral ligament – knee injury].”
He had played in 37 matches that season, starting 31, right up against the limit for the members of England’s elite player squad. That he has never got close to it since may come as a relief for the more squeamish among us, were it not for the part injury has played in keeping that game time down.
With injuries, though, and age, not to mention the love of a good woman, come wisdom. “I probably have a better attitude towards looking after myself,” he says. “I won’t be going to the Ibizas and Magalufs to get on the piss. When you get married, all those things stop.”
And so many others start. May a few more seasons of unbroken rugby for Croft prove one of them.
