Look out, Leicester Tiger Tom Croft wants his England jersey back

Tom Croft’s mild manner on the pitch might fool some but several months on the sidelines have brought out the fierce competitor in the Leicester flanker.
A neck injury suffered in an attempted tackle on Nick Easter back in April brought the 26-year-old’s season to a premature end – denying him a Premiership final appearance and a place on England‘s summer tour to South Africa.
His biggest rival to the England No.6 shirt, Tom Wood, was also out of action, a chronic toe problem disrupting his season, which meant that it was a third Tom, Exeter‘s Johnson, who had the chance to shine against the Springboks.
And stuck on the other side of the world in a neck brace, Croft admits he found it tough watching someone else in his shirt.
“It could not have come at a worse time to be quite honest, I was pleased with my form in the Six Nations but to miss out on the end of the season was hard,” said Croft, speaking in his role as an SSE ambassador.
“No sportsmen is particularly good at watching from the sidelines but I particularly dislike it and to be at Twickenham for the Premiership final but not able to help was really tough, especially with the boys falling just short in the end.
“Playing for your country is the biggest honour you can get so to miss out on that is never nice and down in South Africa it was always going to be hard.
“No-one likes to see someone else wearing your shirt but my focus has to be club rugby and getting myself back fit as soon as feasibly possible.”
After three months kicking his heels Croft is understandably itching to get back out on to the pitch but as it stands he still does not know when he will return for Leicester, let alone England.
But despite the torture of watching the Red Rose from home, he admits he took a lot of hope from the summer tour.
He added: “At the moment I don’t know when I’m coming back from the injury, I’m definitely not going to be back in time for the start of the season with Leicester.
“I’m back in the weights room which is good but in terms of full practice and then getting back to competitive rugby it’s hard to put a time frame on it.
“On the one hand it’s lucky that I’ve got this time in the summer to try to put it right but it meant I had to watch the boys have a tough time of it in South Africa on the TV.
“It’s all about learning from this experience and building on it because we have a very hard set of autumn internationals coming up.
“And with this experience of the Boks on their turf under our belt we will be a much better side come those games.
“Of course we want to be winning games, but if you’re not winning, and we were close at times, then at the very least you need to make sure you are improving and I think we are doing that.”