League: Life turns full circle for England's hard man

Stuart Fielden. Photo / Getty Images

In 2006, the league world lay at Stuart Fielden's feet - but it was the hard man prop who ended up on the floor. Decked by Willie Mason in a test match, decked by a former teammate in a charity boxing ring, decked by life when his mother passed away.

Heading into tomorrow's test against the Kiwis, when he will play his first meaningful test since 2006, Fielden is back on his feet again. It has taken four years.

In the intervening period a player who once, as one English journalist put it - "destroyed Wests Tigers single handedly in the 2006 world club challenge" - pretty much fell off a cliff.

After arriving Downunder later that year with a huge reputation he walked onto a Mason sucker punch and never recovered. A huge money transfer to Wigan turned into a nightmare when his form dipped and he was heckled by fans underwhelmed by the amount of bang he provided for some very serious bucks. And his tough guy reputation took a further hit when the smaller but exceptionally tough Hull forward Lee Radford took less than a minute to floor him in a charity boxing match.

In 2007, he emerged as a shell of the player he had been and was duly dumped by England. A crisis of confidence in a player who'd largely only tasted success appeared the obvious reason - but it wasn't. He said 2007 and 2008 were the worst years if his life.

His nosedive wasn't, he insists, anything to do with being floored by Mason.

"It was nothing to do with that. It was other reasons."

Other reasons he won't speak about. Fielden is one of the game's deeper thinkers. He's analytical and thoughtful, but there are some places he just won't go. His mother's death is top of that list. He hasn't discussed its impact on him and he doesn't plan to, although those that know him say he struggled to deal with it. All he will say is that his mental state affected his performance.

That his demise was so public cannot have been easy.

"People with normal jobs can just go home and that is it. You clock off, clock in. With league and higher profile jobs that is not the case.

"But it is yourself. You can't hide from yourself can you? The fact is that it is always on my mind and I can't walk away from it."

Walking away from it is exactly what one Kiwi journalist thought he had done, such was the decline in his profile.

"I thought that guy had retired," the reporter remarked as Fielden strolled by at training.

He hadn't. Instead he finally bounced back to somewhere near his best this season, helping Wigan to their first English title in 12 years.

A recall to the England team was his reward, although even that was not straightforward. His wife gave birth to the couple's first child shortly before the team departed.

The departure of injured captain Adrian Morley leaves Fielden, with 35 tests under his belt, as the England squad's most capped player. It has also probably opened up a spot in the playing 17, allowing him to complete his return from the wilderness.