Ten months, two operations, one date
Screws and plates, taken out of a prop’s foot. That is what it took to get Fin Baxter back on a rugby pitch. Jason Gilmore ended the suspense on Thursday, confirming the Harlequins loosehead will start the pre-season match against Edinburgh on Friday 18 September.
“Fin will be ready. He’s back in full training, he feels good and he looks good,” Gilmore said. Short answer. It closes a saga that had run since last December.
Baxter, 24, came off as a precaution in the Quins’ Big Game against Bristol. What looked routine turned into a string of foot problems, two operations, and a season gone. He sat out the entire Six Nations, the Nations Championship with England, and most of Harlequins’ Premiership campaign.
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The hardware was the problem all along
Gilmore was unusually specific about the medical side. “The England staff came to see ours, they wanted to get him back for the tour. He had screws and plates in the foot, which were irritating the joints and making the foot unstable,” he explained. Once the hardware came out, the recovery moved.
For a front-row forward that detail is not incidental. A prop lives in the scrum, and the scrum starts at the feet. An unstable one means no platform, no power, no selection. Coming back in September buys Baxter a real runway before the November internationals rather than a scramble.
Sixteen caps in a row, then nothing
He had been on a serious run before the break. Sixteen consecutive Tests for England, which is rare for someone who only broke into the squad in 2024. His enhanced Elite Player Squad contract is still in place, so Steve Borthwick clearly has not moved on from him.
Baxter has been at Harlequins since 2020 and had never missed anything close to this long. His coach thinks there may be something in it. “It could do him good to have had a break. He has played a lot, and he’s still a young man. He is very keen to get back,” Gilmore said, before adding the line that will follow Baxter into the season: “Fin is almost like a new signing for us this year.”
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