Tindall counts his blessings

The full extent of the damage sustained when he caught a stray boot from Wales winger Mark Jones has emerged following Tindall's discharge from hospital.

"I don't feel sorry for myself," he said from the cottage he shares with his girlfriend Zara Phillips.

"Far from it, I feel incredibly lucky and glad to be here to talk about it. If the boot had struck me an inch or two higher or lower then I would just have cracked a couple of ribs.

"That's not very pleasant and I would have been out of rugby for a few weeks.

"But I could have settled for that in light of what happened instead. What did for me was my large weight landing on Jones' upturned toe and a boot hit my diaphragm and sternum while the studs caught my liver. My immediate thought was that at least a couple of ribs had been broken but what really worried me was that I was struggling desperately to breath. That's why I lay still for so long on the ground."

Despite that impact, Tindall admits he still did not realise just how serious his injuries were.

'At the time I didn't gauge how serious a condition I was in. I did not realise that, at times, there were a dozen doctors and nurses all standing by my bed talking, then turning round and looking at me.

"I also noted that things couldn't be too good because I had three needles tickling into my arms and another two in my neck. I didn't realise it but I had a tear in my liver.

"It was more than an inch wide and more than an inch deep and my condition was compounded by air released between the lungs and ribs from the hole in my lung.

"The biggest concern was my internal bleeding. I lost two pints of blood into my membrane.

"Luckily it clotted and stemmed the flow.

"If it had leaked out much more and floated around in my stomach I would have been in deep trouble."