Peter Jackson: Wales Morgan Stoddart deserves to avoid scrapheap

After 20 Tests spanning 46 weeks, the curtain came down in Sydney yesterday on the busiest and longest Welsh international season. Back home, the player they lost along the way is still fighting for his future.
Morgan Stoddart was there at the very start last summer, against England at Twickenham on August 6, the day when his progress to securing a place at the World Cup ended in a broken left leg and ankle. Almost a year on, the Scarlets’ full back-cum-wing is still in the throes of recovering from the shattering experience.
Early prognoses of a New Year return having proved wildly optimistic, Stoddart had no option but to sit the season out and let nature take its course. A second operation, albeit a minor one for the removal of two screws from his left ankle, caused a further delay.
The good news is that he has been given the all-clear to start running again. Specialist approval to resume contact work will not be given before further X-ray examination next month.
“I hope to get clearance to start the contact stuff in the next few weeks,” Stoddart said. “I have to be positive. The biggest test will come during the pre-season matches, to see how the leg copes with 80 minutes of action.
“The last X-ray last month showed that everything is progressing. It seems to be all right and I’m just doing some basic running three times a week – two endurance sessions and one for speed which involves shuttle runs over 50 metres. The ankle’s still sore but that’s only to be expected after such a long time.
“I have stayed pretty positive and the Scarlets have been very good. They’re not  giving me any deadlines. They’re waiting to see how it goes. Their attitude is, ‘you’re ready when you’re ready’.
“Missing the World Cup was a big blow. It was more difficult watching the matches in New Zealand than the Six Nations but I got over that disappointment a long time ago. Once I’m back in form for the Scarlets, other things will follow from that.”
During a year when the scrapheap of international players finished by injury grows ever higher, Stoddart will bust the proverbial gut to ensure he gets back to where he was at Twickenham last August. Had fate left him alone, there can be no doubt he would have gone to the World Cup instead of Lee Byrne or Aled Brew.
At 27, Stoddart has enough time on his side to lengthen a Test record of eight matches and five tries, the first on debut against South Africa five years ago, the last against the Barbarians this time last year. Since then Leigh Halfpenny has made the full-back position his own but Wales need Stoddart fit and firing to ease the threadbare look about their wing alternatives beyond George North and Alex Cuthbert.
In sitting out every one of Wales’ 19 capped matches since Twickenham last summer, Stoddart will not need to be advised about the ephemeral nature of international competition. Of the England backs on duty when he broke his leg, only two are still there – Manu Tuilagi and Danny Care, the scrum-half who had the presence of mind to alert referee Steve Walsh to the gravity of Stoddart’s injury.
The rest of the Englishmen behind the scrum – Delon Armitage, Matt Banahan, Riki Flutey, Mark Cueto and Jonny Wilkinson – have all been discarded post-World Cup. The Welsh backs, by contrast, have hardly changed and Stoddart is ready to go the full distance to prove that he is far from finished as a Test player.
One battering too many has put paid to quite a few in recent months – the English back-row trio of Tom Rees, Lewis Moody and Joe Worsley; three tight-five Welsh forwards, World Cup hooker Lloyd Burns, Blues lock Deiniol Jones and Scarlets’ prop Iestyn Thomas.
Then there was the Irish quartet of Jerry Flannery, Denis Leamy, David Wallace plus the veteran wing Shane Horgan, his Scottish counterpart, Simon Danielli, and much-travelled former England hooker, Andy Long.
If there is any justice at all, Stoddart will be back…