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

Darcy Graham has revealed he is finally free of the “constant pain” he has endured for the past year since damaging knee ligaments in December 2022.

The Edinburgh and Scotland winger had a one-inch screw inserted into his knee 12 months ago as part of an operation to create a “fake MCL” after tearing his medial collateral ligament in a URC match against Munster.

Graham, 26, was in the form of his life at the time, having scored 13 tries in 10 games for club and country, including nine in six for Edinburgh, to that point last season.

He was sidelined for over three months, missing the entire Six Nations, and returned at the tail end of Edinburgh’s underwhelming 2022-23 campaign, racking up another three tries in four games.

When the Rugby World Cup warm-up games came around, it was like he’d never been away – with three more tries in Scotland’s first two outings against Italy and France. Five more followed – including four in an 84-0 rout of Romania – in four games at the global tournament, before he was forced off early in the second half of Scotland’s final pool match against Ireland with a hip injury.

It wasn’t the way Graham wanted his – or Scotland’s – campaign to end, but it has proved something of a blessing in disguise. While recuperating from the hip issue, he took the chance to have the screw – which he keeps in his bedroom as a reminder – removed from his right knee.

“My knee has been giving me bother for over a year,” he explained. “I got my operation this time last year and it has never been right since then.

“They put a fake MCL in over the top to give my real MCL time to heal. When they took the fake MCL and screw out, my normal MCL had healed fully. It is solid as a rock now. Everything is fine, back to normal.

“I was killing two birds with one stone. I knew my hip would be a while, so I got my knee sorted out at the same time. I got the screw taken out and that allows me to run more freely now. I am not in constant pain anymore. I can walk upstairs now and not be in pain. I don’t wake up in the middle of night feeling sore anymore. My overall life is a lot better.“

Graham might still have been running in the tries – he had scored 11 in 10 games since returning to action last summer by the end of Scotland’s World Cup campaign – but behind the scenes he was having to nurse himself through the weeks leading up to matches.

“It did not affect me in games, it was more training wise,” he said. “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 at international level and in the World Cup, you don’t get the best out of yourself. Even here at club level, if you don’t train at 100 per cent, 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 had been carrying that knee pain for 11 months so it was always going to affect me.

“As soon as I got onto medication and painkillers, I was fine, I didn’t feel it. But I couldn’t live on painkillers and medication all the time. That was the reason we decided to take the screw out.”

With his knee fully operational again, Graham was initially scheduled to make his comeback against Ulster a fortnight ago, but his hip still “wasn’t great”. “We had to inject it so that pushed me back a bit,” he said.

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Graham finally put two months of frustration behind him when he was named on the bench for Saturday’s Champions Cup pool match against Castres.

The plan was for him to get 20 to 30 minutes to ease himself back in. But when young Edinburgh full-back Harry Paterson was forced off after just 10 minutes for an HIA following a head-high tackle which earned Castres centre Andrea Cocagi a red card, Graham was thrust straight back into the fray.

“It was just the way it worked out,” he added. “I was planning for those 20, 30 minutes but the way things went, I was happy to stay on that for the rest of that half.

“Minutes are key for me just now. I need to get them in with the Six Nations just round the corner and the two big Glasgow games coming up, so I am glad I got that run out. I feel sharp enough. I didn’t get much ball in hand as the wind made it difficult, especially when we were playing into it, it was tough going. But I was glad to be out on the pitch with the boys again. It feels like forever since I was last here.

“I just need to get back to full match fitness now and work hard at training. Harry Paterson, Duhan [van der Merwe] and Wes Goosen are playing unbelievable just now so there is real pressure there. I have to prove myself.”

Graham might have capped his comeback with a second-half try, but Van der Merwe – with a simple scoring pass to Graham on offer – opted to batter through the last Castres defender and score a second try himself. “He finished it, so it is all good,” Graham smirked.

With the first two rounds of European action negotiated, Edinburgh’s attention now turns to a festive double-header against Scottish rivals Glasgow, with the first leg of their annual 1872 Cup contest at Scotstoun on Friday, before the return leg at Murrayfield on 30 December.

“It is a massive part of the season,” Graham added. “It is huge for the Scottish fans. They love seeing us go head to head and there is a lot on the line. Last season they cost us a top-eight spot because Glasgow won both of them.

“We need to go to Glasgow all guns blazing. It’s not that we don’t like them. We are playing our best mates, especially in a World Cup year where we have lived with each other for 19 weeks. So we have to flick that switch, but we can do that quite easily.”