{"id":8242,"date":"2026-02-15T14:40:05","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T09:10:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/2026\/02\/15\/izuchukwu-put-off-surgery-before-six-nations-debut\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T14:40:05","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T09:10:05","slug":"izuchukwu-put-off-surgery-before-six-nations-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/2026\/02\/15\/izuchukwu-put-off-surgery-before-six-nations-debut\/","title":{"rendered":"Izuchukwu put off surgery before Six Nations debut"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Published17 minutes ago<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Cormac Izuchukwu said his Six Nations debut in the 20-13 win over Italy was &quot;unbelievable&quot; amidst an injury-hit season for the Ulster lock.<\/p>\n<p>The 25-year-old has had a stop-start campaign due to injury and illness, starting just four games for Ulster and missing Ireland&#x27;s November games.<\/p>\n<p>He played 59 minutes <a href=\"\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/cj0drg3383eo\">in the victory<\/a> against Italy in his first game since 2 January, a relief for Izuchukwu after fearing he would need surgery earlier in the season which would rule him out of the rest of the campaign.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;Obviously I&#x27;ve been injured for the whole season, played like four or five games, haven&#x27;t played since early January I think,&quot; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I met a surgeon recently and I was supposed to get surgery and stuff, and said I&#x27;d give it one more shot and then all of a sudden you&#x27;re playing again, so it&#x27;s class.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It&#x27;s unbelievable. I was delighted.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Izuchukwu, who has now won five Ireland caps, admitted he was caught by surprise at the magnitude of the Six Nations in the build-up to the Italy game.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;It&#x27;s mental because for me at the France game, such a big stage and I had a taste of it from sitting on the bench as the 24th man, but then I treat every Ireland game just like an Ireland game,&quot; he added.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;They&#x27;re all so special to me, whether it&#x27;s Portugal or Fiji or Georgia or whatever, they mean the world to me, but I was blown away by the response from social media, online and my family, it&#x27;s such a big deal to them. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;Six Nations, maybe I didn&#x27;t grasp it as much as I should have, so that was a shock, but I kind of came to terms with the last couple of days, got my head around it and then just got stuck in.&quot;<\/p>\n<h2>Related topics<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"\/sport\/rugby-union\/teams\/ulster\">Ulster<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"\/sport\/rugby-union\/irish\">Irish Rugby<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"\/sport\/northern-ireland\">Northern Ireland Sport<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"\/sport\/rugby-union\">Rugby Union<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"\/sport\/rugby-union\/teams\/ireland\">Ireland Rugby Union<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Izuchukwu put off surgery before Six Nations debutImage source, InphoImage caption, Izuchukwu has started just four games for Ulster this seasonPublished17 minutes agoCormac Izuchukwu said his Six Nat&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":8243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-decor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp1.niviyo.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}