Friday 21 April 2017 18:05, UK
Wigan forward Tony Clubb is to have a kidney removed but insists he will be back playing before the end of the season.
The former London Broncos player, who played for England in the 2010 Four Nations Series, says he has been struggling all season with back pain which has been diagnosed as a kidney ailment and he will now undergo surgery.
"I woke up one night and couldn't walk I was in that much pain," Clubb said. "I rang our doctor Chris Brookes and our physio Jo Seddon at four in the morning and said 'this isn't backache guys it's more than that'.
"They sent me for a scan and I saw a urologist who took a scan of my kidney and basically found out I had a kink in the tube leading into my kidney which had actually killed it off."
Clubb, who played in Wigan's first nine matches of the season including their World Club Challenge triumph over Cronulla, says he was assured the condition would not get worse through playing but reveals it began to have an effect on his performances.
"I couldn't take on as much fluid or protein or the supplements that I would normally take going into games," he added. "When I was taking on a lot of water all at once it was filling my kidneys up and causing me a lot of pain.
"The other week I played in the Castleford game and the pain came on pretty bad and I got sent to hospital. Brookesy and Jo said it was probably time I had it sorted and had the kidney removed.
"In just over a week I'll have the operation to remove the kidney and then hopefully I'll be on the mend straight after that.
"It should be a reasonable turnaround and I should be back in training in two to three months' time and quite a few athletes only have one kidney, many people are also only born with one so I'll be fine.
"It's a routine operation these days and hopefully I'll only be in and out of hospital within a couple of days."
Clubb had a cage inserted into his neck last year to correct a bulging disc that forced him to miss the second half of the season, including Wigan's Grand Final win over Warrington.
