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'I didn’t have a heartbeat for just under 20 seconds. I pretty much died'
By Joe Harvey
Powered by Alex Corbisiero’s words of wisdom and fresh from a Major League Rugby sabbatical, Luke Green is hoping to put a turbulent start to his career behind him with Northampton Saints.
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In the past three years, Green has been made redundant, missed 28 weeks with injury and even experienced cardiac arrest.
Now among the ranks of Phil Dowson’s Gallagher Premiership Champions, the tighthead has made a bright start back in England with three appearances at the start of this new campaign.
Throughout his youth, Green was seen as a promising prospect. He joined the London Irish Academy at the age of 15, made his professional debut for the Exiles just four years later and contributed to England U20’s Six Nations Grand Slam in 2021.
But in the summer of 2022 Green’s career started to take a series of unexpected turns and it all started with a crunch.
“It was a normal training session at Irish doing live scrums,” Green said. “We engaged, the scrum collapsed. Happens all the time. My right stud stayed in the ground, and I had a full rupture in the plantar plate in my right foot.”
Just like that a loan move to Australia to play in the Shute Shield for valuable playing time was scuppered.
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Instead of getting on a flight Down Under, Green’s existence became one of recovery.
Having visited a specialist the youngster was advised that he needed 10 weeks in a moon boot to avoid surgery, with the ligament repairing itself.
“I went back to have a scan, make sure I was good to go, and it hadn’t healed,” he said. “It had actually gotten worse.
“I was sat with the specialist; he looked at me and said he’d got it wrong. I needed to have surgery.
“I was wrapping my head around doing that for ten weeks, for nothing. Ten pointless weeks and I had to have surgery anyway.
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“It was 16 weeks of recovery from the day of surgery. It’s not what you want to hear.
“But life doesn’t always go the way you want.”
But just when Green thought there could not be any more turns on his road to recovery, one came when he least expected it.
Booked in for the surgery to repair his foot, Green was in the preparation room when he experienced an “incredibly rare” occurrence.
Already with a resting heart rate between 44 and 46 beats per minute, when the anaesthetist introduced fentanyl to his system, it triggered a cardiac arrest.
“I remember slipping off,” Green wryly smiled. “It was quite strange because I remember waking up, they had a tube in my throat and the machine was going off because I had flatlined.
“I didn’t have a heartbeat for just under 20 seconds. I pretty much died.
“Then when I came back around, I asked why they hadn’t done my toe. Then they asked if I had any idea what had just happened. Obviously, I didn’t.
“I had to see a cardiologist, have my heart scanned and it turned out my heart is completely fine.
“It was just incredibly rare. It never happens. But it happened to me.
“Then the surgery was booked again. I was a bit nervous the night before. I thought I was going to die again. I didn’t die.”
After another 16 weeks of recovery Green was ready to get back on the pitch.
Playing in the Premiership Rugby Cup and twice for Ampthill in the Championship, Green was loaned to Major League Rugby’s San Diego Legion.
Looking to make up for lost time on the pitch, Green was some 5,000 miles from home when the club that took him in as a teenager ceased to exist and left him rudderless.
“About a month into my time, my May paycheque came through from Irish and it was only half,” Green explained.
“I was missing out on all of the gossip from the boys because I was in San Diego and I was trying to keep up with the rumours, meetings with the RPA and all that sort of thing.
“Two weeks later I didn’t get the other half of my paycheque and the club was gone.
“I got caught in this no man’s land for a little bit of time because I had been sent there on loan, but the club I was on loan from no longer existed.”
San Diego acted quickly to make sure that Green could see out the rest of the 2023 season Stateside.
During that first stint in North America the 23-year-old started ten games and helped the team reach the MLR Championship Final where they lost 25-24 to the New England Free Jacks.
Upon his return to England, everything had changed.
Lifelong friends from the Exiles had moved on to pastures new and it meant that a period of adjustment to a new reality had to follow.
During that time the foundations for Green’s move to Northampton were laid.
Joining the East Midlands club on a short-term deal he spent the working week helping Saints prepare for league and Investec Championship Cup fixtures, while turning out for Ampthill at the weekend.
That three-month spell was enough to convince Phil Dowson, along with the club’s scrum coach Matt Ferguson, to bring him back full-time for 2024/25.
In the meantime, Green had decided to give it another crack with San Diego.
With Ma’a Nonu returning to the club, Matt Giteau reversed his retirement and there was even a reunion with his former London Irish captain Blair Cowan.
Again the southern Californians were contending for silverware.
Making the Playoffs once again, Legion came unstuck in the Western Conference semi-finals and brought Green’s time in America to a close.
“It was perfect for the period of my life and period of my career that I was in,” Green said. It was the reset I needed post-injury. It was the change of scenery and life experience I needed post-London Irish going under.
“Do I think we should have won it in 2023 when we made the final? Yes. Do I think in 2024 we could have been far better? Yes.
“But I always try to look for the positives in things. I played 24 games, started 20 of them and made some fantastic memories.
“The league is growing. It is exciting. It was fun to be part of and for the period of my life it was in.”
Going to San Diego also offered Green one-on-one coaching with a Northampton and London Irish great. Since his premature retirement, Alex Corbisiero has been living in California.
Best friends with former London Irish coach Jonathan Fisher, it was Corbisiero who in part paved the way for Green to go across the Atlantic and play at the club he serves as scrum coach.
Having looked up to Corbisiero since the 2013 British and Irish Lions tour of Australia, it was a unique opportunity to learn from a player robbed of his best years by injury. Returning to England after that time in Corbisiero’s scrummaging dojo and Green is feeling the benefit of the 36-year-old’s unique coaching.
“He is incredibly unique,” Green laughed. “He is absolute chaos. He is a complete nutter. He can smash ice creams and pizza like no one I have ever seen.
“But he is incredibly detailed. “Once he hyper-fixates on something he almost obsesses over it.
“To be on the end of that, it was hugely beneficial for all areas of my game that he was coaching.
“My scrum, my crouch, bind, set detail and my breakdown. It was fantastic to be part of that and have him for the time that I did.
“I milked every minute that I had with him because as a player he has done the things that I want to replicate.”
It is a relationship that extended far beyond coaching. In Corbisiero, Green was able to lean on a person who has struggled with chronic injury and has even combatted testicular cancer.
The pair were even united in grief when the club that launched both of their careers ceased to exist.
“From a life point of view he has been through all sorts of stuff,” Green said. “At the time I was with him, I was going through all sorts of stuff.
“I was with him after I had a cardiac arrest. I had been out with my toe for a long time. He struggled with his knee for a long time. He has had his health stuff.
“He was with me when I got the phone call to say that Irish was done and gave me a big hug.
“From an emotional point of view he is very understanding, very sympathetic and also takes a very stoic viewpoint on things.
“Everything happens for a reason. You have to take the lessons and learnings from everything that happens during your life and use it in a positive way.”
Green now lives on a farm just outside Northampton with his dog. After moving out of London the 23-year-old was keen to get away from the hustle and bustle of city life and has been reunited with former London Irish teammates Tarek Haffar, Chunya Munga, Tom Pearson and George Makepeace-Cubitt.
Jostling with senior internationals Trevor Davison and Elliot Millar Mills for places in the matchday 23 is an unenviable task, but one that Green is grasping with both hands as the club looks to become champions of England for a second year running.
After five rounds of fixtures Saints sit fifth in the Premiership table and five points adrift from their hosts this Friday night, Bristol Bears.
“I want to make my mark at this club,” Green said. “I want to improve week to week. I want to be the best player I can be and make selection as difficult as possible for the coaches.
“We are a relatively new group. We are a young group. We are undefeated at home and we are taking it week by week and want to win every game in front of us.
“It was fantastic what they did last season, but you can tell that the squad is focused on this season.
“That season has been and gone. It was great what they achieved. But that was last season. This is this season. We want to do it again.”
Louis Rees-Zammit joins Jim Hamilton for the latest episode of Walk the Talk to discuss his move to the NFL. Watch now on RugbyPass TV
