{"id":12101,"date":"2025-03-19T21:05:56","date_gmt":"2025-03-19T21:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/claudia-macdonald-england-wing-was-terrified-to-be-near-rugby-pitch-before-return\/"},"modified":"2025-03-19T21:05:56","modified_gmt":"2025-03-19T21:05:56","slug":"claudia-macdonald-england-wing-was-terrified-to-be-near-rugby-pitch-before-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/claudia-macdonald-england-wing-was-terrified-to-be-near-rugby-pitch-before-return\/","title":{"rendered":"Claudia MacDonald: England wing was ‘terrified’ to be near rugby pitch before return"},"content":{"rendered":"


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England wing Claudia MacDonald says she has overcome her fear of leaving the house after recovering from a second neck injury to return to the Red Roses set-up.<\/b><\/p>\n

MacDonald, who can also play at scrum-half, was ruled out of last year’s Women’s Six Nations<\/a> after suffering a second neck injury in February 2024.<\/p>\n

It followed her first neck injury in 2022, which made the Exeter Chiefs utility back consider retirement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 29-year-old returned to the field in Exeter’s Premiership Women’s Rugby defeat by eventual champions Gloucester-Hartpury in December 2024 and has since been recalled to England’s Six Nations squad.<\/p>\n

Speaking before the Roses begin the defence of their title against Italy in York on Sunday, MacDonald said she was “terrified” of being near anything rugby related.<\/p>\n

“I made a tackle and the next second I was on the floor not able to move my arms or legs so it was pretty scary in the first few moments,” said MacDonald on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

“In the first couple of months, playing wasn’t even on the radar – it was about trying to get my mind around what had happened. <\/p>\n

“I was terrified to be anywhere near a rugby pitch or a rugby ball. I didn’t want to have my back away from the wall as I didn’t want anything behind me because I was scared of being knocked. <\/p>\n

“I barely left my house and I was told not to go in a car so it was all quite scary but thankfully we got past all of that.”<\/p>\n

MacDonald says she had to learn to trust her body again – but being reunited with her club-mates reminded her why she wanted to return to action.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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England wing Claudia MacDonald says she has overcome her fear of leaving the house after recovering from a second neck injury to return to the Red Roses set-up. MacDonald, who can also play at scrum-half, was ruled out of last year’s Women’s Six Nations after suffering a second neck injury in February 2024. It followed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rugby"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12103,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12101\/revisions\/12103"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}