Sam Tomkins has had an incredible career and has been a huge influence on rugby league as a whole, but like most professional athletes, he has had to overcome a number of different setbacks in his career, such as a bad injury he had a few years ago, which he had to spend a lot of time to overcome.
Tomkins won seven major trophies through his career at the Wigan Warriors, being a huge part of the teams’ success, picking up a few individual awards in the process.
He said, “I loved my time in Wigan, they made me who I am today, and they were some of the best years of my life and I’ve still got a lot of friends at the club, a club that still means a lot to me, but then towards the end of my stint there, my knee problems started, and I almost made the decision to retire.”
This was when Tomkins started to struggle in his career as he couldn’t make up his decision about whether or not he needed to give up the thing he loves most and retire.
He said, “It got to the point in my career where I have had the success I’ve had and I’m thankful for it but I couldn’t decide if it was worth it or not because of what was happening to my knee, I’ve had to get a synthetic knee and I just didn’t know if the risk to a lifelong Injury was worth it.”
This was such a huge part of Tomkins career, where he was trying to decide whether or not to retire early but of course he made the decision to stay in rugby as he transferred to what would go on to be another successful stint at the Catalan Dragons, where he carried on his legacy he has left on the sport.
He said, “coming to Catalan was a brilliant move for me. They helped me to make the decision to stay in rugby with all the great lads here and facilities they’ve got. I’ve carried on my career, and I like to believe it was the correct decision.”
Tomkins has just played in a Grand final for the Dragons, even if they did sadly lose, but he was such a big reason as to why they made it, further proving how him deciding not to retire and push further on with his career was such a good decision, showing to everyone who ever has to go through bad injuries, there is always a way back, even if at some points you almost want to give up.
