Why Lawes vanished from the Sale team sheet
Courtney Lawes last played for Sale Sharks on October 17. Almost four weeks on, the 37-year-old has explained the gap, and it had nothing to do with a rugby injury in the usual sense. He spent 10 days in hospital with a staphylococcal infection in his bloodstream.
Lawes, who won more than 100 England caps, told the GBR XTRA podcast the trouble started with what looked like flu, paired with severe muscle pain. On the journey home his right arm stopped working properly. By the next day his temperature had spiked, his hips and pelvis had seized up and only his left arm still functioned normally. His partner pushed him to go to A&E, and he was seen by a doctor at around 1am.
no renewal
Free for 2 weeks.
Inflammation markers of 240
Blood tests showed his infection markers were sky high, and a planned overnight stay stretched to 10 days. It took four days before doctors confirmed staph, a bacteria that lives harmlessly on the skin of roughly three in ten people but can cause serious damage once it reaches the blood. Lawes believes it got in through a wound on his foot, opened up when someone stood on it, that never healed properly.
The numbers tell the story. One doctor later told him his blood inflammation markers had peaked at 240. The normal level is under five. Lawes, a player who has spent close to two decades shrugging off knocks at the highest level, described the first five or six days as the most pain he has ever experienced, worse than anything since knee surgery.
He was candid about the risk. Left untreated, an infection like this can reach the heart, lungs or spine, and he acknowledged it can kill, though he stressed he was never close to that point.
Road back for Sale
The good news for Sale is that the worst is over. Lawes was still on intravenous antibiotics this week, with the plan to come off them on Thursday and begin his return-to-play programme from there. No timeline has been set, and he says he is taking it one day at a time.
For a club that leans on his experience in the back row, getting a fit Lawes back for the busy winter stretch would be a significant boost.
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