Family remedy works for Fuga

Tani Fuga today revealed the family advice that helped heal a serious ankle injury and allowed the Samoan hooker to power Harlequins into the European Shield Final against Narbonne on 20 May.

Fuga damaged his ankle in a recent league match with Wasps and was reduced to hobbling around on crutches with his season apparently over. However, a rib injury to Ireland captain Keith Wood and the decision by Shield organisers to stop Quins registering 19-year-old hooker Johnny Rodham forced Fuga to try to get himself fit.

If Fuga had not won his battle, then Quins would have pulled out of their semi-final at Leeds and handed Newcastle the game. Instead, with the Samoan battering into the opposition, the London club gained revenge for their Tetley's Bitter Cup Final defeat by the same opposition.

After savouring the victory, Fuga said: "I was struggling with my ankle, so I called my mother back home and asked her what I should do. Her advice was to put the damaged ankle under a hot water tap and to get my wife to rub the injury. It may sound simple, but it worked."

Fuga bolstered this water treatment with regular sessions with the Quins medical team, but they had admit the rapid recovery of the Samoan must have had something to do with that advice from 12,000 miles away.

Mark Evans, the Quins chief executive whose decision to take over the forwards' coaching at Christmas has helped turn the club around, was happy to allow Fuga to follow whatever routine he wanted as long as it got him on to the pitch.

Although it did not constitute involving a faith healer like Eileen Drewery, Evans believes the combination of hot water and Mrs Tuga's hands was "an unorthodox treatment".