Potential Lions spot and sister Amy's journey the motivating factors for comeback kid Casey

Munster scrum-half Craig Casey. Pic: James Crombie/Inpho

An ambition to tour with the British & Irish Lions this summer provided the motivation for Craig Casey as he battled back from a serious knee injury for almost four months but it was the harder times being experienced by sister Amy which gave the Munster scrum-half perspective as he progressed through his rehabilitation.

Casey is set to continue his comeback from the meniscus surgery he underwent last December when he spearheads Munster’s bid for the end-of-season URC play-offs against the Bulls at Thomond Park on Saturday evening, his 26th birthday.

When he left Castres on crutches on December 13, it appeared there could be a much longer absence on the sidelines but Casey this week explained the motivating factors to not only return to full fitness.

Casey’s has been a revelation since his first match back at Connacht on March 29, 15 weeks on from the injury which threatened to wreck his season, helping to breathe fresh impetus into Munster’s campaign, with tries against both Connacht in Mayo and then finishing a superb counter-attack from Thaakir Abrahams in La Rochelle a week later to set up a famous Champions Cup Round of 16 victory.

The performances have capped an impressive reintegration into the Munster number nine jersey and Casey cited his sister’s own rehab from a second back surgery in seven years for scoliosis as providing perspective for his own problems.

“It’s obviously been frustrating, timing-wise, for me,” Casey said, “but it could have been an awful lot worse. There are bigger things going on in the world.

“I know myself that I had my injury, and it’s funny how things happen, my sister had another spinal injury whilst I was out injured, so it has been weird for the two of us to be injured at the same time.

“But it definitely gives me that extra perspective of how my injury isn’t that bad. And to be honest, she is a lot tougher than me. I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from the recovery that she has done over the last two times she has had the back surgery.

“I don’t have a lot to owe her for that because obviously you don’t want her to have spinal surgery but to see that fight and how tough she is – it has been inspiring for me to come back and just enjoy playing rugby again, to be honest.

“She had scoliosis surgery in 2018. She kind of had to learn how to walk and stuff like that. It’s funny, I was injured at the same time, out for 14 months and then when I got injured again this time, she had something go wrong with her back as well. She had to have serious back surgery. Thankfully she is doing well. She’s a fighter, for sure.

“She will recover fairly well. I suppose during the dark days where you’re thinking ‘Oh Jesus, my knee isn’t going too well, you go home and you see her learning how to walk again.

“That’s inspiring enough as it is and then she only had surgery there last week. You see how tough she is and how mentally strong she is. Like I said, it gives me an extra perspective of going out on the field doing what we all love.” 

Another key driver on his road back to the Munster team has been what lies ahead, and while Casey is in competition with all four qualifying Six Nations starting nines, his ambition to become a British & Irish Lion in Australia this summer is undimmed.

“It’s something I won’t shy away from saying I want to go on. It definitely fuelled me over the rehab. I didn’t want to let missing the Six Nations be an excuse for missing out on a Lions tour because all the nines, probably, have missed time. 

"I think Alex Mitchell missed the November internationals and he definitely won’t be using that as an excuse so I don’t want losing out on the Six Nations as an excuse to miss the Lions tour.

“I wanted to come back and hit the ground running and put my hand up straight away… Hopefully I’m good enough to be picked and if I am good enough to be picked I’m sure I will be and if I’m not, I won’t.”