David Corkery fought the good fight, as you'd expect from someone for whom rugby was so much a part of his life, but the 27-year-old Cork Constitution, Munster and Ireland flanker formally accepted the inevitable yesterday when announcing his premature retirement from the game.
It wouldn't be stretching a point to say that Corkery was cut off in his prime due to the ruptured Achilles tendon injury sustained while playing for Munster against Connacht in the Guinness Interprovincial Championship last November. That was a particularly cruel cut given it came shortly after Corkery was forced to withdraw from the Ireland World Cup squad with a back strain. Of some consolation, as he said yesterday, is that he is being employed by the IRFU as a youth development officer, based in Cork. "Naturally I am very disappointed at 27 years of age to be forced out of the game by injury. But I am delighted for the opportunity to stay in rugby with the IRFU as a youth development officer."
Capped 27 times between 1994 and 1999 - his last appearance coming as a replacement in the second Test against Australia in Perth 14 months ago - there is, as Munster coach Declan Kidney pointed out yesterday, an awful irony in that Corkery had just returned to Irish rugby from Bristol in part to prolong his career.
"The tragedy of David being injured the way he was is that having come home from England he'd been playing better again and that the demands of the game here were more suited to him. He was a player who used his physical attributes to the full and he was getting recovery in between matches which he wouldn't have been getting to such an extent over in England, where he would have had to play more matches."
Known for his trademark big hits, aside from his tackling and his huge heart, Corkery was a good lineout option and had great speed in wide open spaces with an eye for the try line.
Given the lesser demands of Irish rugby, and other reasons, Kidney believes that Corkery was just coming into his prime. "He was playing really well. Certainly we'll miss him a lot. He brought a fierce commitment to the game which in his younger days people may have said was overzealous. But he was coming more to terms with that and I think that 27-30 is the prime time for an Irish rugby player."
Springbok lock Krynauw Otto is recovering well after undergoing an emergency brain operation last week, officials said yesterday. But there was no immediate indication as to whether Otto would be able to play again.
Otto was admitted to the Pretoria East hospital on Friday after complaining of severe headaches. Doctors found bleeding on his brain which they said was caused by a head injury he suffered during the Springboks' Mandela Cup test against Australia in Melbourne in July. Surgeons drained 180 millilitres of blood from the player's brain.
