England's Nathan Hughes sustains dead leg injury in Wasps defeat
Tuesday 3 October 2017 18:01, UK
Nathan Hughes suffered a dead leg in Wasps' 25-9 Aviva Premiership defeat by Bath on Sunday to add to England coach Eddie Jones' selection headache.
The No 8 was forced off at the Ricoh Arena after international colleague Anthony Watson's knee made contact with his knee during an aerial challenge.
The England back-row forward tried to run the injury off but could not and was forced off the pitch in Coventry.
Wasps are hopeful Hughes will return within a week or so, which would put his participation in the upcoming autumn Test series against Argentina, Australia and Samoa, live on Sky Sports, in little doubt.
However, Jones will be anxious for him to regain full fitness quickly as he is in line to replace first-choice No 8 Billy Vunipola after the Saracens star was ruled out until January at the earliest following knee surgery.
"Nathan had quite a bad dead leg," said Wasps director of rugby Dai Young, after a third straight defeat took some of the shine off the club's 150th anniversary celebrations. "Hopefully he will recover by next week, but we don't know.
"We've said before it will only be one week and it ends up being longer.
"We said that with Danny Cipriani - one week to 10 days when it was three months, so what do I know?
"It's a bit early to tell, but he's certainly not looking at knee instability or anything like that, it's purely a dead leg. Nathan's a big player for us."
England prop Kyle Sinckler was cited earlier in the day for an alleged eye-gouging incident in Harlequins' defeat at Northampton.
He has been told to appear before a Rugby Football Union disciplinary panel in Bristol on Tuesday evening to learn his fate with the entry-level sanction, if found guilty, being a 12-week suspension.
