Chev Walker: Broken leg was 'waiting to happen'

Former Great Britain centre Chev Walker claims he knew he would break his leg after carrying a stress fracture for the past two years.

The 26-year-old Hull KR player shattered his left tibia and broke his fibula in two places following an innocuous tackle during his team's 44-8 Super League play-off defeat by his former club Leeds last Friday.

Still in Leeds General Infirmary, Walker has revealed he had been having pain-killing injections to enable him to play on with the stress fracture that had failed to heal.

"I got through previous weeks with an injection to numb it but last week I went through training okay and did not need one," he told the Hull Daily Mail. "So my first thought was, 'It's gone... my stress fracture is now a break'.

"There was a risk of it happening because it had not healed as it should have done. When the physio came on, I said, 'It's been a long time coming, it's been waiting to happen'."

Surgeons spent two hours pinning the bones back together and a frame is due to be fitted tomorrow.

Walker is expected to return home on Monday and is confident of making a full recovery.

"Other sports people have had injuries like this and come back so I'm pretty positive in that way," he said. "Because I've got a firm base to build the bone from, that should speed it up a bit. As soon as the bone is healed I can start my rehab - the goal is six months."