Claudia MacDonald revealed she had “written off” her chances of playing at the World Cup after turning down neck surgery on an injury she sustained last year, as she spoke on The Rugby Paper Podcast.
MacDonald made a stunning return to the team last week, scoring four tries as England beat Fiji 84-19 to get their campaign off to the perfect start.
“When you look at it as two bookends they look quite extreme, but having lived through it all it seems a little bit more progressive,” she said.
“The more I learnt about the injury, the more I realised how bad it was, and it got to the point where it was either: have neck surgery, and all the complications that come with that, or potentially never play again, and hope the neck might repair itself.”
She took the latter option, and after the injury mended itself quicker than many of her doctors and physios had anticipated, she was back and ready to go.
“That took me to around May/June time and after a load of work with medical staff to get my neck strengthened, I was able to throw myself into the England pre-season.
“Fortunately at the end of all of that, I managed to get selected and then selected for games too, which was a huge surprise and I was really grateful.
“It's so much more than I would have anticipated a year ago when I was given news about my neck originally, I'd very much written the World Cup off, but now we're in it we always want more.”
With the tournament now in full swing, fellow podcast guest Rocky Clark was delighted to see how fans in both host country New Zealand, and across the World, had embraced the tournament.
Clark said: “The amount of people that were watching, with families over watching who have pretty much travelled the World and sell out stadiums is incredible.
“This World Cup is growing to game for sure, they'll be loads of new players taking up the game after this.”
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