LEE Mossop is finally ready to shoulder the burden of playing well after finally getting to the bottom of his long-standing injury woes – after EIGHT shoulder reconstructions.
And the Salford man revealed the cause was something he has had all his career.
The prop’s time on the pitch has been dominated by shoulder injuries, which meant six reconstructions on his right side and two on his left.
Now after the latest absence caused by the joint, he has unearthed the real reason why he could not get rid of issues and it has been a case of re-training his brain, much like the ‘heel, toe, heel, toe’ message that runs through the minds of people who have had to learn to walk again.
Mossop said: “I saw specialists in London and left no stone unturned. They work with nothing but shoulders and spotted a couple of things I’d missed in the past.
“I’d had the problem for years which is why my shoulder kept crumbling. There was a nerve in my neck that got damaged somewhere along the line and had stopped working, that was the nerve that fires my shoulder.
“I’d be good for two, three, four or eight games then sometimes when that nerve wouldn’t fire, my shoulder would crumble. Because of the amount of what they called trauma to my shoulder, it started working differently to how it should, the nerve patterns coming from my brain had altered.
“Say someone threw a ball, normally you’d just instinctively catch it as your brain would fire a signal to work the shoulder. Mine had altered, so I had to re-alter it back. That took a while to just reinforce proper patterns, I’ll have to do it for a while now.
“The exercises that correct it are really simple but they trigger the right reactions. They’re simple but it’s a case of doing them loads and loads and loads of times, so it becomes natural when you go to catch a ball.
“Sometimes I felt a bit daft when I started doing them and went, ‘Why wasn’t I doing this before?’ but having had a lot of experience in rehab of shoulders I know it’s working, it’s the best I’ve felt in six or seven years.”
Now he is back and hopefully over the woes that have arguably denied him an England shirt, Mossop is ready to hit the heights again, even though Salford are struggling.
Ian Watson’s men lost their last two Super League games with a combined score of 10-90 and slumped out of the Challenge Cup at Championship side Leigh.
But the 29-year-old insists his confidence to do the business has never faltered and revealed just how lucky he has been compared to others who have had shoulder reconstructions.
He added: “One of the specialists couldn’t believe the range of movement I’ve got after the amount of surgery I’ve had. She said that sometimes people come in after one operation and can’t lift their arm over their head.
“At the start of last year, I was being talked about for England, so it was massively frustrating, it was a nothing tackle yet again but I’ve always got confidence in myself that if I can stay fit I can produce the kind of performances I know I can.”
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