Elliot Daly had a metal plate and 16 screws inserted into his left forearm during an operation in Manchester only three days after he suffered a spiral fracture playing for the British & Irish Lions against Queensland Reds.
The hypertrophic scar that runs the length of Daly’s forearm is an angry red but, true to the man, the colour does not reflect his disposition.
The 33-year-old would have had every right to feel bitter. Daly was not even supposed to be playing that night. After opening the tour with two classy displays to lay down a Test marker at full back, he had been rested for the Brisbane game so that Hugo Keenan could make his Lions debut.
But Keenan, the Ireland full back, was forced to pull out of the game with a stomach bug that laid him low for 12 days. Daly had just left the gym on the day of the game when his phone rang. “Well done,” Andy Farrell, the head coach, said. “You’ve won the golden ticket. You’re playing this evening.”
Daly’s late inclusion extended a remarkable run of being in every Lions match-day squad since the opening fixture of the 2021 tour to South Africa, a run of 11 consecutive games. In his three Lions tours, he had missed out only four times in 22 fixtures.
Daly reinforced his Test-match credentials against the Reds with some lovely touches, including an assist for Tommy Freeman’s first try. But just after the hour mark, he rushed up into the defensive line to close the space. Jock Campbell, the Reds full back, tried to evade the tackle and his right hip cracked into Daly’s outstretched forearm.
It looked innocuous enough but Daly’s reaction — spinning out of the contact and down on to one knee, holding his arm — told a different story. He knew immediately something was wrong. We all did. Some golden ticket.
Daly managed to stay on the field after the initial contact
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“It was a pretty bad break,” Daly says. “It broke in the middle and then sort of spiral fractured each way. So that was the worst bit. If it just broke in the middle, then it’s not as bad. But because it was kind of in bits, it takes a bit longer to get back. I had to have a plate the whole length of my radius which will stay in there. It makes for a good x-ray!”
Daly continued to play for three more minutes, at one point chasing a kick downfield with his left arm immobile by his side. He eventually left the field with a grimace and a shake of the head after Huw Jones had blocked a kick on halfway, regathered and raced away for the seventh of eight Lions tries.
“The doctor came on and all my testing was fine. It just felt a little bit dead in here,” Daly says, pointing to a spot in the middle of his forearm. “Sometimes you get like an elbow in there [and it can feel numb].
“So I thought, ‘Oh, it could be that’. But then as soon as the medics left, I think we had a lineout and we kicked it. I was running after it, and I was like, ‘I’ve broken my arm’. I could feel that it was all wobbly and clicking.
“And then the ball wouldn’t go out. You’re just trying to get people to fill in the space you should be. I was running from touchline to touchline. I couldn’t touch the ball.”
Daly spent the rest of the game on the bench with his arm wrapped in a sling of ice. Afterwards he was taken immediately to hospital and he agreed to allow the Lions in-house cameraman to document the journey. Almost immediately, he had a matter-of-fact mindset.
Daly on the sidelines after coming off
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“I think I deal with stuff like, ‘Oh, it’s happened. I can’t really do anything about it,’ ” he says. “That was my mentality towards it. Obviously, it’s absolutely gutting.
“But if you’re excessively gutted about it, in my opinion, you then don’t focus on the next thing, which is getting back. I think that’s just how I deal with stuff.
“Obviously, everyone’s very different, but I’d rather just be like, ‘Right, that’s me done’. I was emotional about it but it’s like, in rugby and in sport, it can happen any day.
“And it was just one of those things. It’s just an awkward tackle that gets you in the right spot.
Daly was remarkably stoic about his tour ending early, choosing to focus only on his recovery in the hours after breaking an arm
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARC ASPLAND
“It happened on a stage which you don’t want, because you want to be available for the whole tour. But at the same time, it could have happened at the end of the season and I didn’t go on tour. So that’s how I kind of look at it.”
Daly and the Lions considered surgery in Australia. He was invited to remain with the squad for as long as he wanted, an indicator of how important his personality and experience was. But Daly chose to get home immediately, although he was given one final task.
“Big Faz said, ‘Do you want to announce the team [for the NSW Waratahs game]?’ My initial thing was like, ‘Not really’.
Daly had been in excellent form, scoring twice against the Western Force in the Lions’ first tour game in Perth
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“But I said I would do it. I just thought it would be nice to stand up and say to the lads, ‘Thanks for everything, go and smash it’. It was good to address them.
“I could have stayed and watched that game in Sydney. [But] then you end up being a week later in your recovery. That was my mindset towards it. The best thing for me was to come home and get the operation done. Let’s not waste any time in that regard.
“Also, I wasn’t very mobile at that point because I had a massive cast on, up to my shoulder. So I wouldn’t be able to take my pants off very easily and I don’t think my room-mate would necessarily want that every morning.”
Daly crashes over for his first and the Lions’s third try against Western Force
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Daly flew home via Qatar; a long and uncomfortable flight. With his arm locked in position he could not lie back. Concerns that his arm would swell with the flight pressure thankfully proved unfounded. He landed on the Friday, two days after the game, and the next day he was in Manchester.
“It was weird to walk out without a cast. My arm was in a sling and the surgeon wanted me to keep mobile.”
A week after the operation, while the Lions were in Adelaide for their final tune-up before the first Test, Daly was at Lord’s for the match between England and India. A fine cricketer himself, having represented Surrey and England Under-15s, Daly was invited on to Test Match Special.
“I really enjoyed it,” he says. “I told my dad and he was very happy about it. I love cricket, so it was nice to talk about something else.”
Daly’s attitude towards recovery will have helped him avoid the “what if?” questions about the Lions. The Test No15 jersey was there for the taking with Blair Kinghorn and Keenan both struggling for fitness. In the end, Keenan recovered in time and he scored the winning try in Melbourne that clinched the series.
“You could see that something was brewing for them,” he says. “Owen Farrell came in as I was leaving. We crossed in the air. Big Faz said to me that he was going to bring Owen out and I just said, ‘Why would you not?’ It was a good time to bring out someone like that.
Farrell, Daly’s Saracens team-mate, replaced him in Australia after Daly flew home
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARC ASPLAND
“There is an element of experience needed when you get to a point in the tour when guys are in the Test team and other guys want to break into it. They need guidance in these games to keep winning and build momentum.
“Every Lions tour I’ve been on, I never think about the end goal. You just think about the there and then. How can we make this team the best it can be? The people that have that mindset go the furthest because it’s a team game.
“When I’m in a squad, I just want to be respected in that squad. That’s the bond you have with the Lions. I still talk to quite a few people from the 2017 tour, 2021 tour and now this tour as well, that you wouldn’t usually. It’s the friendships you make. I’m very, very thankful to have been on three Lions tours.”
Now it is on to the next job. After months spent training on his own, Daly is close to returning to action in a young, promising Saracens side who have opened the season with victories over Newcastle Red Bulls and Bristol Bears.
Daly’s fellow Lions, Maro Itoje, Jamie George and Ben Earl, are all eligible to play against Harlequins on Sunday. Then comes the prospect of a packed England autumn schedule. But first things first. “It’s been a lot of lonely running,” he says. “I am just looking forward to getting back with the boys.”