Guest Column - Kirk Dixon: I'll be thumbing a lift for return against my home-town club

MY PROBLEM went back to the Wigan game in last year's play-offs.

Afterwards, I just felt ill. Plain and simple. It got worse and worse and after a week I went to hospital.

They diagnosed a blood clot. It was pretty scary at the time. I didn't know what it all entailed or what had happened.

It turned out my calf had flared up and the clot there had prevented blood getting to my lung, which meant I had trouble breathing.

I had five days in hospital and then had to have six months on the blood-thinning tablet Warfarin.

Going on that meant I could not risk any contact at all because of the risk of internal bleeding.

If, let's say, someone had hit me in the ribs, I could have

bled, it wouldn't have clotted quickly enough and it could have been a major issue so I've had to keep away from all contact.

I've been able to do everything else in training but it just means I've been doing a lot of running for the last few months.

I'd not heard about blood clots as an injury before but once I knew what I was dealing with I saw that Rob Purdham at Harlequins has had a similar problem along with a couple

of footballers, Manchester United's John O'Shea and Bolton's Gary Cahill.

It normally happens when you've had a break but mine happened because I got a tear in my quad.

Hopefully, it's all behind me now. It's been more of an illness than an injury and I've been off the tablets for more than two weeks. I've got back into the physical side, am in the 17 for tonight and I'm glad to be back again.

We've a few other injuries at the minute and we're going through a pretty tough patch. The problems we're picking up aren't little ones – Dean (Widders), Richie (Owen) and now Brett (Ferres) have all had operations; they're not just out for a couple of weeks.

Anyway, it's Hull tonight and, after three defeats, we want to be back in the winners' circle.

It's not a big crisis. We know how close we are to performing. We started off well against Hull KR last week going 10-0 up but went away from what we were doing well.

Obviously, people like watching us as we like throwing the ball around but sometimes we have to rein that in. We're not far off.

Whichever 17 we put out, I'd take it to do the job. We've got to get back to the way we played against Leeds and start doing the little things right again. Hopefully, then we'll get the result.

It was a bit weird when I got told this would be the week I'd be coming back – my home-town team and former club.

Hull are a quality side but we know we can go there and get two points.

It's only a short trip for me – the coach goes past the top of my street on the way to the ground so I'll stick my thumb out and, hopefully, they'll stop for me.

Interview by Dave Craven.