Will Fraser retires at 27

A career that sparkled with promise and silverware amid a black plague of injuries ended this summer with a stark prognosis.

“Last year I managed to squeeze in four games before I slipped a disk in my neck and had a significant bleed on the spine,” Fraser explains straightforwardly. “It wasn’t great.

“I was told by the surgeon there wasn’t a decision to be made. That was that. In that respect, it was made easier for me because it was black and white.”

Without too much time to wrack his brains, Fraser can rattle off the 10 operations he has undergone. His hips, knee and right foot account for two each. Both ankles have needed procedures, as has his back and a latissimus dorsi muscle that came away from the bone in the spring of 2013, just before an England cap would almost certainly have arrived on the tour of Argentina.