Jonathan Danty: “Spending every day on your sofa with tears in your eyes...”

Jonathan Danty says his serious knee injury still feels as if it happened yesterday, nearly a year after it ended his last match.

The La Rochelle player injured his right knee four minutes before the end of a Top 14 game against Clermont on September 13, 2025. Doctors diagnosed ruptures of both the anterior and posterior cruciate ligaments.

Danty, who won 29 caps for France between 2016 and 2024, says the injury left his knee highly unstable. Although the operation went well, the months that followed proved difficult. He describes about four months of intense hardship and says the pain remained severe for a long time.

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Spending every day on your sofa with tears in your eyes...

Eleven and a half months later, the 34-year-old, who can play at centre or in the back row, remains in rehabilitation. He hopes to return within a month, but his account focuses as much on the emotional strain as the physical recovery.

In the interview, Danty discusses his doubts, his hopes and his thoughts about the next phase of his career. The headline captures the depth of that period, when he says he spent his days on the sofa with tears in his eyes.

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It was extremely complicated. With the rupture of the anterior and posterior cruciate ligaments, there was significant instability in the knee.