Thanks for putting it into perspective for me FMG, but I still have some pseudo questions/opinions
1. Ankle injuries are more common than knee ones... The most common one is the lateral collateral ligament of the ankle being strained. This injury heals slowly. And the problem with such injuries is that it makes you prone to getting injured again. Its a niggling debilitating injury which prevents you from moving as you like since its a weakness that is prone to getting injured in sports.
2. The ankle is a lot weaker than the knee. The ankle is designed for movements in a certain way. While the knee is more rigid, the ankle will give out more easily than a knee. Playing rugby with injured ankle equals BLOODY STUPID. It takes 3 weeks for a simple sprain to go away. And 6 weeks to fully recuperate if you are'nt putting weight down it. Mr. Wilkinson was made to train with it forcing it to be further injured.
I still see this as more of a niggling injury than a disabilitating one, you might rightly call it stupidity, but players of his calibre tend to have the will/determination/adrenaline to ignore non-debilitating injuries
3. The knee has a lot of ligaments. Which one did he hurt? Cause I can shin you and strain your patellar ligament and you will spend a few days hobbling about. Or i can tear your medial collateral ligament and watch you recover over the course of 6 months while on vicodin. Or I can tear a Cruciate ligament which while not as painful would cause you to be incapable of actually walking since you no longer have the ability to point your foot without active thought and movement of muscles. OR an accessory ligament (soreness) or the popliteal ligament (prevents a bunch of stuff from getting caught in the joint)... Or a meniscus (good night career in sports!) or a bursae (look my leg is now silly large!) or the joint capsule (prepare for surgery!) itself.
The majority of what you mentioned seemed pretty bad, I've never torn ligaments, but I do suffer from ITB (right acronym?) which means I periodically get inflamation in the tendon on the side of my knee. This is just inflamation, not a tear and as a result I can't use my leg for a day.
So on the whole, I still feel that the knee injury had a far greater likelyhood of being the more painful/disabling injury.
Yeah here in South Africa we have a weird sect who think that finding a girl outside of the family is for thieves so they marry in the family... Only in the South
Have you ever noticed how everyone on Potchefstroom look the same?