Lydiate targets return

11:37am Thursday 3rd July 2008

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LYING motionless in hospital in France staring at the ceiling, Dan Lydiate feared the worst as medical staff gathered around him.

Requests for X-rays, a CAT scan then an MRI and calls for a neurosurgeon - it seemed to be getting more and more serious.

The Newport Gwent Dragons blindside flanker had been injured making a tackle in the first game of the Heineken Cup at Perpignan's Stade Aime-Giral on November 9.

A pile of bodies fell on top of the then 19-year-old, crushing a disc, breaking vertebrae and ripping the ligaments at the back of his neck as it snapped forward.

"I heard a big crunch in my neck and thought that's not good,' he recalled. "I tried to get up but couldn't and I was losing the feeling in my legs and arms, so I just tried to keep them moving because I thought if I stopped I wouldn't be able to get them going again.

"Dee (Clark, the team doctor) came running on and looked after me and I realise now that it was the best place it could have happened because if I had been in a game in Division Four or something the treatment would have been a sponge on the neck and attempts to get me moving."

Fast forward eight months and the former Wales Under-21s back rower must be the happiest man in the Dragons squad to be slogging it out in preparation for the new season.

Incredibly, Lydiate is bidding to be in the starting line-up when the Magners League kicks off.

His long journey back to fitness started with a two-and-a-half hour flight back to Wales in an air ambulance before a drive from Cardiff to Morriston Hospital, Swansea - all while wearing a special cast to stop him moving his neck that locked together his whole jaw.

They put it on the night before with his mouth closed and his teeth clamped together - it was pure agony but nothing compared with the pain of being a previously fit and healthy teenager forced, temporarily, into a life of inactivity.

"I was just sitting on my thumbs for the first couple of months and from doing training every day to doing nothing was a big shock to the system," he said.

"I wasn't eating that much in hospital and quickly lost a stone, and then as soon as I started again it all came back on as crap weight - you sit there and see your body changing for the worse while you can't do anything about it.

"But the worst thing was seeing the Dragons playing on a Friday night on TV, that really got to me."

When he was taken into Morriston he was told if he didn't have an operation he would never be able to play rugby again and that he could be paralysed by the smallest of falls.

As with any operation, there were risks involved going under the knife, but it went to plan and by January he was exercising with his legs. He made swift progress and six weeks ago began rehab on his neck, wearing a head harness and weights around his neck.

After being forced back to his family's farming home in Llandrindod Wells while recovering, Lydiate is back in Newport where he shares a house with team-mate Hugh Gustafson and setting his sights on that number six shirt.

He is waiting for the all clear from the surgeon to resume full contact, but is training with the rest of the squad, doing line-out lifts and fitness work.

"I will just see how it goes and how the body reacts to contact, but I want to go straight in and start the season with the Dragons," he said.

"It will run through my head before I make my first tackle I suppose, but as long as I do everything I am told to do I will have no worries. Once I get that tackle out of the way it will be behind me."

Before breaking into the first team Dan played with his brother Jack, who recently signed for Pontypool, at Ebbw Vale. He doesn't know whether he will be asked to play in the Premiership, but whatever happens he is determined to build on his ten Dragons appearance to date.

The 20-year-old made his bow at the end of the 2006-7 campaign, his emergence even catching those at his own region on the hop with teamsheets handed out with the name Lydiatt' on them, before he really caught the eye at the start of last season.

"I had a couple of good games and then the injury happened. But at least I had been able to give a glimpse of what I can do, now I need to take it on," he said.

"You just want to get out there and play. The first time you see the teamsheet you look for who is playing six. I just want to get back starting for the Dragons, carry on from where I left off and have an injury-free season."

It is understandable why so many people feared the worst for Lydiate when they heard it was a neck injury - reinforced by the tragic death of Neath scrum-half Gareth Jones.

Lydiate knows how lucky he is to be able to lace his boots and indulge in the changing room banter that he so badly missed. That was underlined by reading an article on Matt Hampson, the former Leicester prop who became quadriplegic after a scrummaging practice accident with England Under-21s.

"When I was injured I saw a spread in the newspaper on him and his friendship with (England back row) James Haskell," said Lydiate. "I read his story and about his life and it was incredible. It was the same with him, he was just scrummaging and next minute he is at death's door.

"You are just playing a game, but you don't know what's around the corner. But if you worried about it you wouldn't play, so you just get on with it.

"I just want to get back now. It was a freak accident and it's not like I did anything wrong, or got hit. You can't explain it, I just count myself very lucky."