Luke Cowan-Dickie of Sale Sharks and Jamie George of Saracens have a chat after the Gallagher Premiership Rugby match between Saracens and Sale Sharks at StoneX Stadium on September 28, 2024 in Barnet, England. (Photo by Patrick Khachfe/Getty Images) – Patrick Khachfe/Getty Images
Inside the warren of rooms at Sale Sharks’ training complex in Carrington, you hear Luke Cowan-Dickie’s booming voice long before you see him.
The hooker bounds in for his interview with Telegraph Sport in good spirits. The sun is shining, albeit briefly, and his body feels in the best shape it has been in for years despite a career total of 14 operations.
For someone who grew up in Cornwall and spent the first 12 years of his career at Exeter Chiefs, Cowan-Dickie has made himself right at home in the North West among the Sale’s fraternity of northerners, South Africans and the odd Fijian.
“I think I fit in well,” Cowan-Dickie said. “The boys are really nice. Funnily enough on the field they are animals, off the field they are soft. Like really soft. Especially the Du Preez brothers, they are just complete opposite. They are the nicest family men who would do anything for the boys off the field. On the pitch, they are total monsters.”
Cowan-Dickie marked his signing for Sale with a picture of a can of Boddingtons, a meat pie and a bucket hat captioned “I never really liked croissants anyway…” in reference to his aborted move to Montpellier.
The backroom staff around Carrington adore Cowan-Dickie. So does Alex Sanderson, the Sale director of rugby, for the hyperactive energy he brings into the environment. “He’s a personality,” Sanderson says. “He’s wired a bit differently.”
Mark Regan, the former England hooker, recently complained that the modern game lacks characters, an assertion with which Cowan-Dickie takes issue. There are just as many personalities in changing rooms as there ever were but the advent of professionalism and the sanctimonious expectation for rugby players to act as role models at all times has kept a lot of them hidden.
“What do you mean by characters?” Cowan-Dickie said. “I never watched rugby when I was younger. Were the characters back then? The game has matured a lot. We are actual athletes now. That’s no disrespect. We are professional now.
“I feel some things would be more frowned upon. There are loads of big characters. [Ellis] Genge, Coley [Dan Cole], [Joe] Marler. Bevan Rodd here, you might not see a lot of him but, trust me, he is a character. Again there are characters off field when you are around your friends and then when you are in front of a camera you naturally put on a different persona. You can’t be the same in every aspect because it is more professional and the club expects certain things because people expect certain things. For example, I know I am not the smartest bloke but when I am on camera I try to act intelligent and nice.”
Go back to the summer of 2023 and his brief incarceration in a ‘drunk tank’ while undergoing a medical for a move to Montpellier. If the same incident happened 30 years ago it would be a stable of after-dinner speeches, but no one saw the funny side at the time. “You can laugh about it, but you are always going to have regrets,” Cowan-Dickie said. “Everything happens for a reason. I had a great time last season at this club. It happened. It was mainly my fault.”
Freddie Steward, (L) Owen Farrell (C) and Luke Cowan-Dickie of England look dejected after their defeat during the Autumn international match between England and South Africa at Twickenham – David Rogers/Getty Images
The move fell through because of nerve damage in his neck that he suffered against South Africa in November 2022 and meant he was effectively playing with one arm in his first season with Sale. “My right arm was really weak before,” Cowan-Dickie said. “I could not bicep 5kg. There were certain things I could not do. I could not pass off my right hand, right to left any distance at all.”
Despite that rather severe limitation, Cowan-Dickie was named in England’s squad for the 2023 Six Nations. His luck with injuries, however, was not about to turn. The week before he was due to link up with the squad, Sale were playing La Rochelle in the Champions Cup when Cowan-Dickie started to feel strange. “After 20 minutes I was extremely tired,” Cowan-Dickie said. “I felt like I was blacking out.
“Boys were shouting at me and I wasn’t really understanding. I had to go down to one knee because I thought I was going to fall over. I got through the first half and was absolutely knackered. In the second half, I came back out and there was a kick chase where I felt my lips going numb. I thought I am definitely not right.”
In the back of an ambulance, Cowan-Dickie was diagnosed with an atrial fibrillation, where the heart beats in abnormal pattern. “At that point my arm was screwed and then my heart went. I was thinking really what more can happen?”
‘Luke is much heavier, fitter. That’s why we wanted to keep him’
Cowan-Dickie has suffered no further symptoms with his heart. His right arm has not recovered its full strength but he says “it feels like my arm again”. With a full pre-season under his belt, this is the best shape that he has been in since the 2020-21 season which ended with him being called up to the Lions, which Sanderson believes is a realistic target for the 31-year-old. “He’s miles thicker up here [in his neck],” Sanderson said. “Much heavier, fitter. That’s why we wanted to keep him. We feel like there’s loads more in him and England are backing him as well. He has got a big opportunity to reinvigorate his career. I reckon he could get back to the Lions looking at him move and the intensity about him and the size of him as well.”
For Cowan-Dickie, his first and only priority is to repay Sale for the faith they have shown him after rescuing him from the scrapheap in 2023 and then re-signing him despite what he feels was an underwhelming first season.
“I loved my first year here,” Cowan-Dickie said. “I don’t think Sale have seen the best of me by a long stretch. Last year I was struggling with my arm quite a bit. There’s a lot more to come from me. It was tough. I was still playing but I was not performing like I wanted to. It was eating me up. I feel like, if I don’t play well this year, then it is on me. I don’t have any excuses.”
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