Mike Brown will this month resume contact training after a 12-week absence from the game because of concussion and the England full-back will not be changing his physical approach.
Brown was knocked out against Italy in the second round of the Six Nations, and although he returned after missing the following match against Ireland, he showed symptoms of concussion after the closing game of the tournament against France and sat out the rest of the season.
He resumed non-contact training last month and will travel to Denver with England’s squad who are preparing for the World Cup. The squad will be cut by five on Friday. “I have no side-effects and it all seems to be behind me now,” said Brown at the launch of England’s World Cup jerseys at Twickenham on Monday.
He said: “I had not been out of the game for such a long time since I was 18 and there were days when you worried. It is difficult when you have an injury that is open-ended rather than having a start and finish date. All you can do is wait. I did not take a specific knock against France and it was more a case of my body telling me I was not ready to come back and needed time to recover. Now I am back to where I was before and will be confident going into contact because it is something I love.”
Brown’s main symptom was a headache and he was ordered to go home, do nothing and try not to think about why he was not helping his club, Harlequins, at the end of a difficult season. “When you are sitting at home, there is little to think about other than why you were there,” he said.
“It was difficult not being able to do what I love and am paid for. I tried to keep busy and did some household chores and eventually I was able to start some light fitness work. The mornings and evenings were the worst for the headaches, which were not significant but always seemed to be there. “I did not want to mask it with medication and only once did I have to lie down.”
A few years ago, before firm protocols were established for players to observe before returning to play after concussion, Brown would probably have spent no more than a few weeks out. “Rugby is a macho sport and it is still quite hard to deal with the subject,” he said. “But you cannot keep pushing with your head – you have to listen to your body. You get paranoid, worrying that the coaches and players think you are faking it to save yourself for the World Cup as they train hard while you go home, but it was about recovering.”
Brown has been England’s first-choice full-back for the past two years, but with Stuart Lancaster stressing the importance of fitness before altitude training in Denver, no one can afford to get ahead of themselves. “Training so far has been brutal,” Brown said. “If anything was going to make my head worse, it is all the work we have been doing, but my headaches got better the harder I trained and disappeared five weeks ago.
“It is the first time I have come into pre-season without any niggles and I just want to become the strongest and quickest I can be so that when the warmup Tests start I will be in the best position to be selected. Stuart wants me to step up as a leader, and I am one of the older members of the squad. It is just good to be back.”