Healey Devastated As Freak Injury Costs Him England Call Up

While Bath's 26-year-old scrum-half Martyn Wood was in mid-air, flying to Perth and a possible place in England's World Cup squad, Austin Healey was yesterday limping into Leicester's medical centre.

The player who Clive Woodward turned to when England's crisis at scrum-half broke was still taking in the fact that but for a freak injury during the warm-up for Saturday's Premiership match at Kingsholm, he would have been due to arrive at Perth early today with an outside chance of playing against South Africa on Saturday.

"He was actually devastated as he would have come out next as scrum-half, but he pulled a calf muscle warming up for Leicester against Gloucester," Woodward said. "He was very honest, and I appreciate that from Austin. He said he would only be 50-50 for next weekend."

After treatment yesterday, Leicester estimated that Healey would be out of rugby for possibly two weeks. "I sat next to him on the coach back from Gloucester and he was pissed off then," said a club spokesman. "And that was before Woodward phoned. Austin hasn't had much luck."

In fact Healey's run of bad luck started last season when he made just 11 appearances for his club.

First it was his groin, then his achilles and his season was finally ended when he injured the ligaments in his knee during Leicester's Heineken Cup quarter-final defeat in April.

Typically Healey, infamous across Australia for his newspaper columns during the 2001 Lions tour, initially chose to stay on the field against Munster, waving away his replacement and angering the Leicester coaching staff when a missed tackle set up the deciding score.

Worse was to follow. His surgeon told him he was unlikely to play again but England bundled Healey and Charlie Hodgson, then Jonny Wilkinson's understudy and a certainty for the World Cup, off to a clinic in the mountains of Vermont.

Healey and Hodgson, who also had ligament problems, were to work with Bill Knowles, the pioneer of a particularly aggressive form of rehabilitation. "If you had a dull pain you carried on, and if you had a sharp pain you stopped," Healey said later.

After a month of Knowles's treatment, Healey was off his crutches and heading for pre-season with Leicester and a decision to concentrate on playing scrum-half.

"Austin has a work ethic unlike any athlete I have ever trained," Knowles said later. "Based on attitude alone, I bet Austin would make it to the World Cup."

Knowles almost collected.

Woodward picked Healey in the original 60-strong training party and he survived the two culls that reduced the squad to 35. But despite earning his 51st cap - in England's final warm-up match in Marseille - his name was missing when the final 30 were announced.

Matt Dawson, Kyran Bracken and Andy Gomarsall, the three No9s now on the Perth injured list, were selected because Woodward had decreed he would not be taking utility players.

Marseille was only the fourth time Healey had started at scrum-half for England.

At the time Healey refused to be dejected. "If we get to the final, and I haven't been called out as a replacement by then, I will go to my local pub wearing full England kit and gumshield and cheer the lads on," he said.