To the naked eye there has been little or nothing wrong with Darcy Graham’s form this year. Up until he injured his hip in Scotland’s game against Ireland at the Rugby World Cup, the Edinburgh winger appeared to have been playing with his usual verve for club and country, menacing defences with his ability to run in tries from anywhere on the field.
But the 26-year-old - who saw action for the first time since that match when he came off the bench in Edinburgh’s 34-21 win over Castres on Saturday - knew that things were not as they should be. A knee injury against Munster last December led to his having a screw inserted, that screw soon began causing him the kind of nagging irritation that meant he could never feel entirely pain-free - and that, in turn, inevitably compromised his ability to play at the top of his game.
Which is why his hip injury in early October came as a blessing in disguise. Knowing he would be sidelined for a number of weeks, Graham used the enforced break to get his knee sorted. Out came the screw - it is now lying around in his bedroom - and up went his hopes of playing without pain again.
Those hopes have now been realised, and after that substitute’s appearance in the Challenge Cup tie against the French club, Graham is now ready to challenge for a starting berth in the Edinburgh line-up as a crucial phase of the season approaches. “I got the screw taken out and that allows me to run more freely now,” he explained after the game, in which he came on far earlier than planned following full-back Harry Paterson’s 10th-minute withdrawal with concussion. “I’m not in constant pain any more.
“I can walk up stairs now and not be in pain. I don’t wake up in the middle of night feeling sore any more. My overall life is a lot better.
“The screw didn’t affect me in games, it was more training wise. I was so sore and it took me a lot to get warmed up and I found training quite hard.
“If you don’t train to full intensity, especially in the World Cup at international level, you don’t get the best out of yourself. Even here at club level, if you don’t train at 100 percent you can’t kick on.
“So yes, it probably did affect me during the World Cup. I wouldn’t say I was any worse than I had been. I was average.
“I had more in me, but I wasn’t at my worst. I had been carrying that knee pain for 11 months, so it was always going to affect me.
“As soon as I got on to medication and pain-killers I was fine, I didn’t feel it. That was the reason we decided to take the screw out - I couldn’t live on pain-killers and medication all the time.”
Confident now that his knee is back to normal, Graham needs nothing more than match practice before getting back to his best. But he knows that he cannot merely presume that he will receive that match practice, given the form of the other back-three players in the Edinburgh squad.
“They put a fake MCL [medial collateral ligament] in over the top to give my real MCL time to heal,” he continued. “When they took the fake MCL and the screw out, my normal MCL had healed fully.
“It’s solid as a rock now. Everything is fine. Back to normal - I just need to get back to full match fitness and working hard at training.
“There are a fair few boys - Harry Paterson, Duhan [van der Merwe], Wes Goosen - playing unbelievably now, so there is real pressure there. I have to prove myself.”
Paterson’s involvement in the festive double-header against Glasgow will depend on his passing his return-to-play protocols, but even without him the competition will still be stiff, especially as Emiliano Boffelli has been pencilled in for a return to action at Scotstoun in Friday night’s first leg. However, given the Argentinian has been injured since the World Cup, it would make sense for his return, like Graham’s, to come off the bench, and for Edinburgh’s starting back three to be the same as the one that ended Saturday’s game: Goosen at full-back, Graham on the right wing and Van der Merwe on the left.
Graham counts a lot of the Warriors players as his friends, and has spent months in their company this year before and during the World Cup. But he knows there will be no room for friendship on Friday, and is sure he can click back into normal professional game mode before kick-off.
“We have to flick that switch, because we’re playing our best mates - especially in World Cup year,” he concluded. “We’ve lived with each other for 19 weeks, so we have to flick that switch - but we can do that quite easily.”
