Rugby-England hooker Thompson desperate to grab second chance

By Mitch Phillips

BAGSHOT, England, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Three years ago, and three years after helping England win the World Cup, hooker Steve Thompson's rugby career was over. At 28 he was forced by a neck injury to give up the game he loved and excelled in.

He took a hefty insurance payment, drowned his sorrows, and saw his weight balloon as he took his first, tentative steps towards a coaching career.

Yet on Saturday, in one of the most unlikely and uplifting comebacks in sport, he will run out to face Australia at Twickenham as, once again, England's starting hooker.

It will be his first start since the 2006 Six Nations and though he made a cameo two-minute appearance off the bench against Argentina in June, it will be a special moment.

"It was my target always. That was my whole reason for coming back, to try to play for England again, to play at the highest level or there's no point coming back," Thompson told reporters on Wednesday.

"But the way it's happened in the last couple of weeks, it's sort of taken me by surprise. It's a different feeling, it's like winning your first cap again really. I am nervous but I know what to expect from the whole day."

It is a very different attitude to when he was first told it was all over, the bad medical news coming after a slide in form that had seen him toppled from being one of the best hookers in the world to the periphery of the England squad.

"As soon as I was told I couldn't play again it think it was a bit of a relief," he said. "I thought I'd never say that but that was just what it had come to."