England flanker TOM CURRY opens up on learning how to run again, walking at a 45º angle and ‘curling up in a ball and crying’ after being told he may have to RETIRE at age 25 – as the Sale forward vowes to make up for lost time after injury turmoil

It’s a phone call Tom Curry will never forget. He was sitting in a Manchester car park, ready to pick up his dachshund Toby, when he found out he might have to retire at the age of 25.

“It’s like the five stages of grief,” says the Sale Sharks and England flanker. “I remember that day so well. Nav, the physio at Sale, was listing all the things that were wrong and I was just in tears.

“Then I had a Zoom call with the surgeon and he said you’re probably going to retire. I literally cried. I curled up in a ball. I just couldn’t process it. It was a surreal moment, but you just have to go through those raw emotions and process it all.”

The ball in Curry’s hip joint had been ground so far beyond its natural shape that there were mornings when he could barely walk. It was lodged in the socket, making it difficult for him to get out of bed, let alone pursue a career as one of the most physical players in international rugby. “I was downstairs for breakfast and I was walking at a 45-degree angle,” he recalled of last year’s World Cup.

The official diagnosis was femoroacetabular impingement syndrome. The surgeon offered Curry the option of undergoing a hip replacement like Andy Murray, but he instead opted for a six-hour keyhole surgery to reshape the femur and implant synthetic cartilage.

‘Andy Murray had the complete replacement straight away, which was an option. There were three options: one was to do what I did, the second was replacement, the third option was to leave it and retire, but you’re not going to do that.

“My biggest thing – the hardest thing – was going into surgery. I had three weeks until surgery and I couldn’t really do anything. I was basically useless because you can’t rehabilitate and you can’t get better, so it’s basically three weeks of standing still.

‘Once I had the surgery, all I thought was, “Now is the process.” Once I got to that point, I was able to process it all a bit better, whereas those three weeks were really tough. You’re limping around, you’ve got retirement on your mind, and you’re useless to anyone.’

Curry moved back in with his parents two weeks ago to help with his recovery. He didn’t play rugby for six months, missed most of Sale’s Premiership campaign and spent long, repetitive days working on his rehabilitation.

“I honestly don’t understand why people say, ‘I got a hobby when I got injured,'” he says. “I honestly can’t think of anything worse. I’d be playing the piano and thinking, ‘Why is that good for my hip?’

‘I was just so obsessed with my hip. My Instagram page, it’s supposed to be a fun app, but it was just hip exercises. I have a file of saved hip exercises that I was like, “I’m going to try that, see if that feels better.”

‘I walked and felt where my foot was in my shoe and understood that if it didn’t feel right, what I did, or if it felt right, what I did. I don’t really switch off.

‘I was limping for a few months and I almost got used to limping. The biggest relief for me was when I started running again because there was a period where it didn’t feel right at all. That’s when I thought, let’s go to Speedworks in Loughborough and they almost taught me how to run again. They just taught me better mechanics and built it up, we went twice a week and every week it just started feeling better and better.’

He ditched the crutches and learned to trust his hip again. Curry made one appearance off the bench at the end of the club season, marking his return with a hard tackle on Josh Bayliss.

Steve Borthwick followed this up with a call-up to the England summer tour and now Curry is making up for lost time. Sale kick off their campaign against Harlequins on Sunday and Curry will be on a personal mission to show that his best days are not over yet.

‘I’m just happy to be back playing for Sale. I feel like I haven’t done it in a while.’