‘I couldn’t live on painkillers’: How latest Graham injury was a blessing in disguise

‘I couldn’t live on painkillers’: How latest Graham injury was a blessing in disguise

After injuring his knee ligaments in December 2022,

Darcy Graham has said he is finally free of the “constant pain” he has been experiencing for the past year.

The Scotland and Edinburgh winger tore his medial collateral ligament in a URC match against Munster,

necessitating surgery to build a “fake MCL,” and one-inch screws were placed into his knee 12 months ago.

Having scored 13 tries in 10 games for club and country,

including nine in six for Edinburgh, up to that point last season,

Graham, 26, was in the best form of his life.

After missing the full Six Nations and being injured for more than three months,

he made a comeback towards the close of Edinburgh’s disappointing 2022–23 campaign,

scoring three more tries in four games.

It seemed as though he had never left during the Rugby World Cup warm-up matches,

scoring three more tries in Scotland’s opening two matches against France and Italy.

In four games in the global event, he scored five more goals,

including four in an 84-0 thumping of Romania,

before being substituted out with a hip injury early in the second half of Scotland’s last group match against Ireland.

Although it wasn’t how Graham or Scotland had hoped for their campaign to conclude,

it has turned out to be a bit of a godsend.

He seized the opportunity to have the screw out of his right knee,

which he keeps in his bedroom as a memento,

while he recovered from the hip problem.

He said, “I’ve been having problems with my knee for more than a year.”

This time last year, I had surgery, and ever since, something has never been right.

“To give my real MCL time to recover, they placed a fake MCL over the top.

My natural MCL had completely healed by the time the prosthetic was removed.

Now it’s as firm as a stone. I’m okay, things are returning to normal.

“I was accomplishing two goals at once.”

Since I knew my hip would take some time,

I took care of my knee at the same time.

I can now run more freely because I got the screw removed,no longer experience continual discomfort.

I’m pain-free now and can walk upstairs. I no longer get pain when I wake up in the middle of the night.

In general, my life has greatly improved.

Graham may still be running in the tries

by the end of Scotland’s World Cup campaign,

he had scored 11 in 10 games since returning to duty last summer

but in the background, he was having to take care of himself in the weeks before games.

“It affected me more in terms of training than in games,

” he remarked. “Training was really difficult for me;

I was very sore and it took me a long time to warm up.

“You don’t get the best out of yourself if you don’t train to your maximum capacity,

especially while competing on an international scale and in the World Cup.

You can’t succeed even at the club level if you don’t train to the fullest.

Yes, it most likely did have an impact on me during the World Cup.

“I wouldn’t say that I had become any worse, was mediocre, still had more in me,

but after 11 months of living with that knee pain, I knew it would always get to me.

“I wasn’t feeling it; as soon as I started taking medicine and painkillers, I was fine.

However, I was unable to constantly rely on medicine and painkillers.

We made the decision to remove the screw for that reason.

Graham was originally supposed to return against Ulster a fortnight ago,

now that his knee was fully functional again, but his hip still “wasn’t great.”

“We had to inject it, which set me back a little,” he remarked.

Graham’s selection to the bench for Saturday’s Champions Cup pool match against

Castres allowed him to finally move past two months of misery.

He was supposed to have twenty to thirty minutes to acclimatise back to the situation.

However, Graham was thrown back into the action as soon as

youthful Edinburgh full-back Harry Paterson was substituted for an HIA after

just ten minutes due to a head-high tackle that resulted in Castres centre Andrea Cocagi receiving a red card.

“That’s just the way things transpired,” he continued.

“I had planned to stay for twenty or thirty minutes, but given how things turned out,

I was content to stay for the remaining thirty minutes.”

“Right now, minutes are crucial for me.

I’m delighted I got that run out because I need to get them in with the Six Nations quickly approaching and the two major Glasgow games coming up.

I think I’m sufficiently observant. The wind made it difficult,

especially when we were playing into it,

so I didn’t get much ball in hand.

However, I was happy to be back on the pitch with the boys.

I haven’t been here in what seems like forever.

“I simply need to work hard in training and come back to full match fitness right now.

There’s a lot of pressure there because Harry Paterson, Duhan [van der Merwe],

and Wes Goosen are playing so well right now. I need to demonstrate my worth.

Graham may have completed his comeback with a try in the second half,

but Van der Merwe chose to smash through the final Castres defender and

score a second try for himself instead of passing Graham an easy ball to score.

Graham grinned and said, “He finished it, so it is all good.”

Edinburgh’s focus now shifts to a festive doubleheader against Scottish rivals Glasgow,

with the first leg of their annual 1872 Cup match at Scotstoun on

Friday and the return leg at Murrayfield on December 30,

following the negotiation of the first two rounds of European play.

“It is a pivotal aspect of the season,” Graham continued.

For the Scottish fans, it is enormous. They enjoy watching us compete since there is a lot at stake.

Glasgow won both of them last season, costing us a top-eight position.

“We must go to Glasgow with full might.

Not because we dislike them, mind you. We are acting like the best of friends,

especially after living together for 19 weeks during a World Cup year.

Thus, we must flip the switch, which is something we can do with ease.

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