LIST | 5 England stars who played through serious injuries

Here are five of the most brutal injuries that England rugby players have fought their way through down the years.

The England international loose-head prop picked up the leg fracture during the first half of Quins’ 24-17 defeat at Worcester a few years back but played on and completed the 80 minutes. A proper hard man.

“In the first half against Worcester away,” said Marler. “The trouble was I did it in the first half and just thought it was a calf knock and pulled my calf as well so there was a bit of confusion there. I thought I could keep running on it because running is not really my forte anyway so I could get away with hobbling a bit.

“I got to the end of the game and said ‘strap it up it’s just a tight calf or whatever’, and then because of the frozen pitches and the weather, we didn’t really get a chance to run it again until the following week’s warm-up which I said to them ‘I’ll be alright, I’ll just run it off’ but I couldn’t run it off because my leg was broken.”

The England flankers mum was reduced to tears when confronted by the sight of her son gushing blood from a wound on his forehead in England's rout of France in 2019.

The image of Curry playing with his face and jersey covered in blood evoked memories of England defender Terry Butcher, who was similarly soaked during a World Cup qualifier against Sweden in 1989.

He played on and after the game it took six stitches to patch Curry up.

Tuilagi revealed this story in the lead up to the 2019 Rugby World Cup: “I used to put padding around my pubis and then strapped around it.

“It’s not nice — I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I played five games with it being really painful. It was stupid.

“I pulled my adductor in my thigh but had no idea what an adductor felt like if you pulled it. I did it on the Thursday, played on the Saturday and strapped it up.

“I played five games with it — and it went higher and higher into my groin. At one stage I started strapping my pubis. The physio was like ‘What are you doing?’ I said ‘Er, nothing’."

The Bath speedster suffered a serious knee injury while away with England at the 2019 Rugby World Cup.

To make matters worse the winger continued to train on the damaged knee throughout the course of the tournament in Japan and played with it heavily strapped while scoring two tries against the USA in his only appearance of the tournament.

The result of which was Cokanasiga not only damaged his knee but caused secondary problems to his lower body and back which was overcompensating for the weakened area of his body as the 6ft 3in 18 and half stone back did more than 20km a week of running on his injury.

The England fly-half suffered a stress fracture to facet joint in his neck after series of heavy collisions during the 2003 Rugby World Cup. The injury was only discovered when Wilkinson underwent a CT scan upon his return to Newcastle Falcons.

A statement from the club said: “Following a CT scan Newcastle Falcons confirm that Jonny Wilkinson has a slight fracture of a facet and believe this may have happened several weeks ago.”

Bony scar tissue touching nerve sent shooting pains through his right shoulder and arm over a long period of time. He finally had surgery in 2004 after playing through the pain longer than he should have.