Gloucester boss George Skivington believes that Jonny May’s “serious mental resilience” will serve him well as he awaits detailed medical opinion on his latest injury.
The England wing suffered a suspected dislocated elbow during Gloucester’s Premiership victory over London Irish.
May did not travel with the England squad to this week’s training camp in Jersey, and he was seeing a specialist on Wednesday for full assessment.
The 32-year-old missed last season’s Six Nations Championship because of a knee issue, but he has repeatedly bounced back from injury blows, carving out a 69-cap Test career.
Only Rory Underwood has scored more tries for England than May – his total of 49 is 14 more than May’s tally – and Skivington has no doubt about his mental strength.
“Considering the setbacks he has had in the past 18 months, he was in pretty good spirits a couple of days ago, and fingers crossed the specialist will be aligned with that,” Skivington said.
“For what Jonny has had to go through in the past 18 months, he has got to have some serious mental resilience. Thankfully, he does, and he is extremely diligent.
“The first couple of days afterwards it (the injury) didn’t appear to be as bad as it first had.
“It is something Jonny has done before, so he has got a bit of a read on it. He didn’t go out with England to Jersey and I am hoping we will have a take on it after he has seen the specialist.
“Sometimes you are optimistic and you get dreadful news, and other times you are terrified and someone says the player is going to be all right next week, so I hesitate to comment.
“If it is bad news, he is not going to be flustered. He will get on with what he needs to do, but fingers crossed it isn’t bad news.
“It is a mental challenge whenever you get injured, and Jonny has had just some unfortunate incidents one after the other after the other.
“Being injured as a professional rugby player is tough to take, and doing rehab is a lot easier to talk about than actually doing it.
“You are often in the gym on your own for hours on end doing tiny little exercises, and it is pretty mind-numbing.”
