‘I was prodding in the dark for answers after broken leg,’ – Ulster centre

• Will Addison: ‘I was prodding in the dark for answers after broken leg,’ says Ulster centre.

“It has been an extremely long road back, really painful. Lots of lows, not many highs, but fortunately I am on the other side of it now.”

After overcoming several obstacles, Ulster centre Will Addison returned in pre-season to end a near two-year absence on the sidelines because of a broken leg.

Addison had not long returned from 15 months out with a back injury when he stepped out against the Lions in October 2021.

He was getting back into his stride and Ulster were comfortably winning at Kingspan Stadium, a place the full-back had called home since 2018.

Then, in the 46th minute, he was caught up in a freak tackle that saw him break his leg and begin a long path to recovery that left him “prodding in the dark for answers”.

If the Ireland international didn’t have bad luck then he would have no luck at all.

“Five games into the season, I felt like I was starting to build something,” Addison recalled.

“It was quite an innocuous incident. Unfortunately my leg was planted in the ground rather than half an inch off it, in which case I would have been fine.

“Those are the small margins of sport and unfortunately I fell on the wrong side.”

‘It was hard to take’

When English-born Addison arrived in Belfast in 2018, he came with a high reputation. He soon earned himself rave reviews with the Ulster support, only for injuries to stop him from building momentum.

Despite this, he still worked his way into Ireland’s team, for which he qualifies through his mother, and made his debut against Italy a few months after his Ulster bow.

He managed to fight his way back into the Ireland set-up after his back injury but things went back to square one on that fateful October night.

Those watching could immediately tell something was terribly wrong. Addison was lying on the turf in agony, and his now-wife, Emma, and father, who was over watching from England, came to see him as he was taken off the pitch.

“My emotions were extremely high as I was carted off the pitch. Initially, I was like ‘that’s me done from rugby’.

“Emotions kind of peaked and troughed through the first week or two of the injury then my competitive head got back on my shoulders and I wanted to get back from the injury and conquer something else.

“It was really difficult. The initial timeline was really up in the air between six months and 18 months. That didn’t give you a whole lot of direction.

“It was a really hard thing to take after the back injury that had kept me out of Irish reckoning. That was in the middle of the pandemic so I had the luxury of not feeling like I was missing rugby because everyone was.

“I got back from that injury, got five games under my belt, got back into the Irish set-up and then broke my leg. It was one knock after another, which was hard to take.

“Luckily, I had plenty of resilience in the bank with the other injuries I’d suffered, so I could get over this one.”

There was also a false dawn where it looked like Addison would return to action in September 2022, but another set-back would put him back on the treatment table.

“I was almost back a year later and I was getting up to rugby speed and was in training with the guys but I started to feel pain in my leg again.

“I had to go through a second operation to put a plate and some pins in my leg. Off the back of that I got an infection, and there were lots of big lows.

“I spent two weeks on an IV drip in the Royal [Hospital in Belfast] just in front of Christmas.

“I ended up with a Picc [peripherally inserted central catheter] line in my arm, which is like a temporary IV [intravenous] line but that ended up causing a blood clot.

“Things I never thought a professional rugby player would have to navigate, we had to get through.”

‘Is this a sign I should finish?’

Addison says the various set-backs caused him to look at his future in the sport “lots of times”.

“In every other injury I’ve always had a clear line of sight where I could get through. With this, there were huge ups and downs.

“I relied heavily on my wife to get me through those times, reminding me that I’d done it before and I could do it again.

“There was a lot of searching in the dark of looking for answers and trying things and then figuring out a path.

“There were certainly times I thought that this is a sign I should finish.”

While Addison does dream of a return to the international scene, his focus is on playing regularly for Ulster and enjoying the sport that has been so kind and so rough at the same time.

“In some ways it has been comforting for me that I’ve had the back injury and I’ve had the leg injury and I know what life on the other side of rugby might look like,” he added.

“I want to really enjoy the next few years that I’ve got left. I’ve missed huge games for Ulster so I’m chomping at the bit to hopefully be involved in huge games at the Kingspan again.

“The more I train and the more I play, the more I feel like my old self. I’m a long way from that right now but I see light at the end of the tunnel that could end in international honours.

“There is a huge amount of work for me to do to get into the Ulster team because there has been guys tearing up trees over the past two years.

“I need to play a number of games to get into that reckoning but I feel I can manage that.”