All Blacks: Time running out for Braid

Daniel Braid is on the road to recovery but time is running out for him to win a World Cup slot for the ABs. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Neck injury was a setback for the flanker. Now he has 96 days to win his All Blacks place.

You want get out and play, just for the sheer fact I love playing.

Daniel BraidTHE PAIN was so excruciating, Daniel Braid needed powerful drugs just to sleep. His neck was stiff, the pain in his left forearm was severe and he lost feeling in a finger in his left hand. He couldn't tighten his chest muscles and lost strength in his tricep.

"The pain would have been 10 out of 10 for the first two-and-a-half weeks," Braid says. "I controlled it by drugs but when they wore off, it got even worse."

Yesterday he was supposed to take his first tentative steps back onto a rugby field by playing for his club side University but didn't risk it after taking a knock to the neck at Blues training late in the week. The thing is, he can't really afford to be tentative if he has aspirations of playing in the World Cup.

Braid might have thought his chances looked good when he was taken as Richie McCaw's backup on last year's end-of-year tour. Although he failed to flatter on tour, the fact he was there suggested he was part of the All Blacks thinking.

He's largely fallen off the radar since injuring his neck in the Blues' 22-22 draw with the Force on March 13. He has a prolapsed, or bulging, disk at C6/C7 on his cervical vertebrae which impinged on the nerve root and caused extreme pain.

He's had neck problems for many years - it's an occupational hazard for openside flankers - but never this bad. As players with time on their hands are wont to do, he even wondered if it might force premature retirement.

Close friends Derren Whitcombe and David Gibson had been forced to retire because of neck problems but, crucially, their injuries were different. They had central disk prolapses, which are a lot more serious, affecting the spinal cord rather than the nerve.

"David and Derren are two close friends of mine and both had operations," Braid says. "They both came back and tried to play. I got advice from them about how to manage the pain."

It hasn't been particularly comfortable watching his World Cup hopes slip away, either. Adam Thomson, Liam Messam and Matt Todd have all presented compelling cases and Braid's brother, Luke, has also been performing well for the Blues in his absence.

"I haven't had a shot at all," he says of defending his All Blacks jersey. "It's been very frustrating. But my long-term career has to come first.

"You want get out and play, just for the sheer fact I love playing. It's been a great competition and I wish I could have played some more but I have had to be very patient with this thing.

"I knew going into this season with the feedback [from the All Blacks coaches] I still had to earn my spot and play some good rugby but the fact they took me on the end-of-year tour meant they were looking at me. I was very keen to get in and play some very good rugby. This is the style of rugby, the way the game is now, that would have suited me. My little brother is going really well and I need to get past him first.

"There's still plenty of time - it was 100 days [until the start of the World Cup] this week - but I have to play some rugby to get in the frame."

He was going to play club rugby largely to get some match fitness and it might delay plans to be available for Saturday's trip to Timaru to take on the Crusaders or the Blues' final round match against the Highlanders.

Braid is still bothered by his neck, although after eight weeks of rehabilitation he has more movement than he did before the injury, and there's a chance it will flair up again.

"It could happen again but it probably has as much chance of happening as it did in the Force game, or last year or the year before," Blues doctor Stephen Kara says. "We could go in and surgically tighten the disk but that will put him out of rugby for six months."

Braid doesn't have six months. He has only 96 days to get right.