One last mountain to climb

SARACENS v MUNSTER/THE ENGLAND LEGEND RICHARD HILL:Having survived terrible injuries and serious illness, the backrow giant hopes to crown a great career with cup glory. Donald McRaegets his thoughts

RICHARD HILL walks slowly but steadily toward the metal staircase leading to the weights room at Saracens' training centre in Hatfield. He is a remarkably unobtrusive man, especially for such an immense rugby player, but he does not try to hide his limp. It looks painful for him to climb the stairs but the 34-year-old keeps moving while explaining his jumbled emotions before Sunday's Heineken Cup semi-final against Munster.

If there is anticipation for the biggest club match of his career Hill knows this will be, at best, his second-last game of rugby. A European Cup final at Twickenham next month would be a stirring farewell but defeat against Munster could mark the end. There is the option of an appearance during the final league game of the season, a meaningless fixture against Bristol, but Hill's left knee might not stand even a sentimental run-around.

Even a trudge up the staircase is a little test and, once we have made it and settled down on a bench alongside the gleaming weights, Hill admits, "I'm in a position now that I don't go outside just for the sake of it. I honestly wouldn't be able to tell you the last time I did fitness work just by running around. It's not the ideal way of doing things because I used to really enjoy running. To have that taken away was not pleasant."

The flanker has been spared the two last weeks of league action while Saracens save his battered body for their European quest but he is still feeling the effects of his momentous quarter-final display against Ospreys. Having been humiliated 30-3 in the EDF Cup by the same team a week earlier, when Saracens played without Hill, they stunned the Ospreys in their Heineken Cup return. Despite playing on virtually one leg Hill rolled back the years to produce a man-of-the-match display full of his trademark tackling and relentless foraging for the ball in an abrasive match.

"The body certainly felt it afterwards," he says with a pained grin. "It took a while to get over that one because there was real intensity. I didn't play against them the week before because I've had to accept a reduced amount of games and training. There have been games I've wanted to play but we've got excellent medical people who understand how much time I should be on my feet. But then I get to play in the Heineken quarter-finals and it works out well. I go with the management. If they pick me, I'm ready."

Even if they need to push him down the tunnel in a wheelchair Saracens will surely select Hill against Munster. They are simply not the same side without him - as proved again when they shipped 40 points in Sunday's home defeat against Wasps.

England, similarly, have never quite recovered from the loss of Hill, who played only eight more internationals after the 2003 World Cup. Even during that triumphant tournament England creaked badly in the three matches he missed through injury - before Hill restored solidity in the semi-final and final. In the most famous example of a side slipping to defeat without him the 2001 Lions seemed doomed once Hill was injured in the second Test against Australia. Until then the Lions had looked in command; and Hill had been inspirational in the victorious first Test.

Those memories dim beneath the catalogue of injuries that have haunted him since October 2004 when, in a match against London Irish, the nightmare began.

"It seemed innocuous," Hill says of the moment he first tore his anterior cruciate ligament.

"We kicked through and I was chasing Catty (Mike Catt), who had the ball. I was 10 metres away, shadowing his movements, and I just heard a pop. It didn't feel like the knee really came with me."

Far worse was to follow. Having worked ceaselessly to rehabilitate his knee Hill played for the Lions in the first Test against New Zealand in June 2005. After only 18 minutes he tore the repaired ligament even more badly.

"It was another freak incident. I had a fair bit of ground to make up and the ball was switched to Ali Williams. I tried to put the shoulder into him but he was intent on running over the top of me. I got good contact but my leg caught in the wrong place beneath me. That was far more painful and the hardest thing was it being the ACL again. I could have handled it if it had been a different ligament."

Without any spare tissue left, the surgeons grafted ligament from a corpse into Hill's knee. He fell desperately ill soon after the transplant and his doctors were mystified by his spiking temperature and deathly pallor.

"I had a series of operations on my knee just to check I had no unseen infections. I was being monitored to make sure I wasn't rejecting the ligament."

He was also tested for various tropical diseases, leukaemia and AIDS and was in hospital for a month and was on medication for a long time, even after he got out of hospital.

Hill is candid in admitting the depression, and "the lowest point" of his life, which followed. "It took hold of me and I did not feel much hope or happiness for a while. Slowly my health improved and I started to talk more positively. But it was a long haul."

His fierce determination to play rugby eventually returned and his luck also changed; his ninth operation was a success. He never quite made a return to Test rugby, even if Brian Ashton named him in his first Six Nations squad last year.

Hill insists he has not made any decision on his future. He has "options both within and outside the sport and I've ruled nothing out at this stage. There's always been a buzz about playing rugby and now I've got to find the next buzz in my life."

Life will, of course, never be the same for Hill, who turns 35 on May 23rd, a day before the Heineken Cup final. He is more preoccupied with the moment he hears the final whistle of his very last match - whether in Coventry this Sunday or at Twickenham.

"There's going to be a lot of feeling in me and so that's been the one thing I've thought about most - the emotion of that last second."

Hill smiles sadly when asked to describe what he might feel in that poignant moment.

"It's not an emotion I'm used to thinking about. Finishing school or college didn't feel like this. I've been playing rugby since I was five. It's been the one constant in my life and this is the end of 30 seasons. The memories aren't just of England or winning the World Cup. I have memories of junior rugby, of amateur games with Salisbury, of making my debut for Saracens on a foul day against Otley. I even have an image of real happiness when I came back from my first knee operation - and the first time I went for a run. That sensation of feeling free and happy will always stick with me."