It is more than 600 days since Jack Mann was afforded the chance to pull on a Glasgow Warriors shirt in a competitive match, but the back-row forward hopes that is all about to change after a horror run of injuries.
Nineteen months on from a concussion on his only appearance for the Warriors’ senior team so far, Mann is back in training and feeling refreshed. He hopes that run of injuries is a thing of the past.
He said: “It was nice to get a good break. I felt I really needed it, to be fair, with last season being pretty tricky for me personally.
"It was nice to get a bit of mental rest over the summer, so I was pretty excited to get stuck back into it when it came round to pre-season last week.”
The concussion he picked up at The Rec on December 10 2022 was the third Mann had suffered during the year, so Glasgow decided to give him extended break from the game.
He explained: “It wasn’t so much that I had any problems with my symptoms or anything like that, it was that I’d had three concussions in that year.
“The normal stand-down for that would be three months, but if I got another concussion within a year after those three I would be out for six months. So if they put me on that stand-down, because of the World Cup I would only miss four or five games of the 2023-24 season.
“That was the thinking, which actually worked out quite well. But it so happened that the cards fell as they may and I broke my ankle two weeks after coming back.”
The 24-year-old said having a close-knit support network helped him navigate the psychological challenges of those back-to-back serious injuries.
“Injuries aren’t particularly new to me,” he said.
“When I was at Edinburgh in the academy I had my fair share, so it’s something I feel that mentally I’ve been quite good at dealing with.
“I’ve got a great support network with my friends and family, and the club was really good to me as well.”
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Mann said the faith shown in him by the club – he signed a new contract in March this year – was a major boost, and now he’s keen to start paying that back with some big performances on the field.
He said: “I feel like they’ve put so much faith in me based on one game. It feels a bit bad that I’ve been sponging off them for the last year and a half, so I’m really keen to reciprocate that.”
Having endured no shortage of setbacks in his career so far, Mann knows he has work to do if he’s to unseat Scotland trio Matt Fagerson, Rory Darge or Jack Dempsey in the Warriors’ breakaway trio.
But he can take heart from someone like Euan Ferrie, who forced his way into the side last season and was on the bench for the URC Grand Final win.
Mann added: “I’m very much targeting this season and want to kick on, but at the same time it’s sport and you can’t predict anything. If I was to get another injury or something like that, then so be it.
“I’m very realistic about the competition in my position - we’ve got the Scotland back row with Darge, Matt and Demmo.
“The competition in the back row is pretty crazy, so I’m realistic about that. At the same time I’m not saying that I want to go out and play the next 25 games for Glasgow - but as many games as I can get possibly, really.”
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