Hull KR forward Sam Luckley has been through the wringer since collecting his Grand Final winners’ ring at Old Trafford in October.
That night will have been up there as one of the best nights in the 30-year-old’s life to date, but he was quickly brought back down to earth as he underwent surgery on a knee injury.
Luckley openly admits to playing through the pain of a torn patellar tendon last season and his admirable ‘grin and bear it’ attitude eventually led to a torn meniscus and bone spurs on his knee cap.
As such, the prop went under the knife to resolve the issue and he missed almost the entirety of pre-season at Craven Park as a result. He’s fully fit now, though, and after returning to training this month, he is in selection contention for tonight’s clash with York Knights.
Whether he plays or not remains to be seen, but he has opened up on the injury, managing it last season and what he has been through since the surgery.
“I tore my patellar tendon and then because I played all year, the tear got bigger and then I tore my meniscus as well,” Luckley told Serious About Rugby League. “I had bone coming off my knee and I had to have my knee cap scraped. It was a nightmare.
“It was a bit silly playing through it all year and then coming back injury-wise, there’s been a lot of it which is mental because my whole left side has been taking the weight of my right so I’ve been trying to tell my brain, ‘I’m alright, I can do this’. It’s a been a mixed bag but I’m really happy with how I’ve progressed.
“Speaking with the physios at the end of season review, I had 100 per cent availability, I didn’t miss any games unless I got rested. I didn’t miss any, played through them all.
“You have to be a bit of a nutter to play this game really. But you don’t want to let the team down and I didn’t want to not play, so you just grin and bear it. The we’d have the protocol of taking anti-inflammatories, ice, all these sort of things to try and get the best out of us and I’d only train on certain days so I could deload.
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“There was science but then there was also a bit of just grin and bear it.”
It’s been a testing few months for the forward then, but he can now look forward to what promises to a season to savour for the Robins after last year’s treble winning heroics. Luckley was central to that success, with the forward playing 29 games in red and white last season
And, having tasted that glory, he wants more of it, with the quadruple his target from a team perspective.
“Success is infectious,” he added. “The new lads have come in and want to do it but we want that feeling again.
“What do you do now? We just do it again. Win the World Club Challenge and then do all three. That’s the aim and I think if we aim any lower than that then it’s not good enough really.
“We’re all going to strive to do the treble again and just keep winning. I wish life was as easy as that but we’re going to try.”
On a personal level, though, Luckley is aiming even higher with a spot on the plane down under for the World Cup on his radar. The former Salford Red Devils man was at the last World Cup with Scotland and has seven caps for the country of his birth, but he grew up in England he has ambitions of pulling on the white jersey later this year.
“I want to win every trophy that we can but I want to try and stick my name forward for that England squad at the World Cup,” he added, with KR boss Willie Peters being linked to the vacant head coach role.
“I never spoke to Shaun Wane or anything like that. The Willie thing would help but I wouldn’t want to get in just because Willie was the coach. Another part of my brain is saying someone else pick it because then I’ll get in on merit.
“If it’s not meant to be, it’s not meant to be, but I’ll work my socks off this year and see how I get on.”
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