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Manu Tuilagi expected to miss Six Nations as well as autumn Test series with latest setback
Manu Tuilagi is facing another season of missed opportunity with England with the Leicester centre now expected to miss out on the Six Nations Championship as well as the autumn Test series following his latest devastating injury setback.
Leicester Tigers today confirmed that Tuilagi faces a 12-week rehabilitation period after undergoing surgery on a knee injury he sustained in his club side’s defeat by Bath last Sunday.
His latest injury – coming on his competitive comeback game after a seven-month lay-off after a serious cartilage tear on his right knee in January – cruelly ended any hopes of any involvement in the three Tests against Argentina, Samoa and Australia in November.
But Telegraph Sport understands that Tuilagi is now almost certain to also miss out on any involvement in the Six Nations campaign given the lack of game time he will have to force his way into Eddie Jones’s squad before the opening match of the championship, against Italy in Rome on Feb 4.
Tuilagi was already on a final warning from Jones about his off-field behaviour after the 26 year-old was sent home in disgrace from a three-day England training camp last month after going on a late-night drinking session with team-mate Denny Solomona.
The defeat by Bath was only Tuilagi’s sixth start for Leicester since he signed a £450,000 deal last season and the meniscus strain to his left knee is the latest in a career that has been ravaged by injury since 2013.
"This is not the knee that Manu injured last season and this is not a major injury in the context of what kept him out for the first half of this year," said Leicester head coach Matt O'Connor.
"Manu has worked really hard with the medical and conditioning teams to come back from long-term injury and was starting to find his feet again on the pitch, but he's just been very unlucky with this one.
“It was an innocuous bump, a freak incident in the game. On closer inspection, there is some damage to the meniscus which needs to be addressed. We look forward to having him back at the end of his recovery period.”
O’Connor would be forgiven for cursing his luck over Tuilagi’s fitness, given the pre-season expectation that the 26-times capped centre had finally overcome his injury problems.
Tuilagi’s inclusion in Jones’s three-day training squad last month had been seen as the first steps back to the Test arena for the 26 year-old after a horrendous run of injuries including chest, groin and knee injuries.
He has played just 17 minutes of Test rugby since 2014 – making just one appearance under Jones off the bench in 2016 Six Nations Championship - and has not started a game at Twickenham in four years.
The injury to his right knee in January ended any hopes of a first start for England under Jones and ruled out any involvement with the Lions tour of New Zealand this summer.
Hopes that the Leicester player, who was member of the Lions’s successful tour of Australia in 2013, will ever return to the game-breaking form that was a stand-out feature of England’s defeat of New Zealand in 2012 were given some perspective on Thursday by Ian McDermott, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon who specialising in knees and sports injuries.
Asked if it was realistic that Tuilagi could return to top of his game without further injury problems, McDermott told Telegraph Sport: “Not a chance.
“He’s such a fantastic player but he’s been plagued by injuries, and with the forces that he’s putting through his joints and the number of operations that he’s had it’s inevitable that his knee will never be 100 per cent normal again, and eventually all this abuse is simply going to catch him up.”
The fact that Tuilagi has now picked up an injury in both knees is likely to cause further complications according to McDermott.
“Repeated injuries combined with determinedly returning to play and pounding your knees simply builds up a massive list of problems for the long-term future, with a much higher risk of premature knee arthritis and early knee replacement surgery,” he added.
“There’s a definite rise in people injuring themselves from playing rugby, and a lot of these knee injuries are severe and they have life-long consequences.”