By Duncan Wood
July 31 2002

Bristol followers will have read with interest in last night's Bristol Evening Post that Matt Salter is on the way back. He missed the last few months of last season to have surgery on a neck injury.

Salts was forced to miss the tail end of the season when he underwent surgery to sort out a problem with a bulging disc in his neck. It is an injury that could well have finished his career a few years back but medical advances have been swift.

Without going into the gory details, he has a disc removed from his neck and replaced with bone taken from his hip which has been fused into the other discs.

He has obviously had to avoid all impact work since the operation and only been able to participate in pre season training in a limited manner. However, he is now hoping to to be back in full action fairly soon.

It is probably down to his style of play that he picked up the injury in the first place. He is a pretty tough tackling back row forward who relishes the physical side of the game. His rugby league background probably contributed to the issue as well.

Having started out as a blindside flanker, he surprised many people by switching to number eight in the 2000-1 season where he added lineout jumping to his better known skills.

Having a healthy Matt Salter in the squad will certainly give Peter Thorburn a difficult time as he will have to choose from the likes of Salts, Ben Sturnham, Ross Beattie, Craig Short and Rhys Oakley for the number eight and blindside positions.

That said, they are impact positions so strength in depth is vital.