St George Illawarra Dragons winger Cody Ramsey snaps two teeth in sickening head clash
St George Illawarra’s Cody Ramsey has spoken of the pain from the moment he snapped two teeth on a teammate’s forehead.
This is Cody Ramsey’s brutal warning about the dangers of playing rugby league without a mouthguard.
It comes after the free-spirited St George Illawarra young gun snapped his two front teeth following an accidental head clash with teammate Andrew McCullough in the opening minutes of
Friday night’s clash against Canberra.
He has since had to have them glued back together but will require surgery in the coming weeks to have them completely replaced.
Recalling the moment of impact, he said: “I knew I had done them as soon as I went into the tackle.
“My teeth went straight into the top of his head.
“I kind of just laid on the ground at first and I put my tongue across the top of my teeth and I could feel both of them snapped in half.
“And I’m like, ‘Oh, no, here we go’.
“I could just feel these sharp edges along where my teeth should be and I was like, ‘No, that’s not right’.
“One was folded in half into the top of my gum and the other split my lip.
“So it was sticking in my lip, clean snapped in half.”
Asked how intense the pain was, he tried to downplay it: “I think because I had a heap of adrenaline it wasn’t too bad.
“It was aching.
“It gave me a bit of a headache but it was definitely a weird pain.”
Ramsey said he was given some pain killers in the dressing sheds before returning to the sideline to watch the remainder of the match.
It wasn’t until the final minutes that he was taken away for emergency treatment at a Burleigh Heads dentist.
“They gave me an anaesthetic to numb my mouth,” he continued.
“I fractured a few roots in my mouth and they pretty much had to cut both teeth out and glue them back together and then stuck them back in.”
He said they then glued braces across his top lip and the top of his teeth, while he also had to have several stitches inserted.
He conceded it was tough to sleep when he got back to the team hotel but after a few hours of watching TV he finally conked out.
He said while the pain has subsided he won’t be biting into a steak anytime soon.
He also doesn’t know at this point for how long he will be sidelined given he will now have to go back in two weeks to get surgery to have the teeth fully replaced.
It wasn’t until almost the end of the interview that he casually threw in the fact that he hasn’t worn a mouthguard for almost his entire playing life.
“I don’t think I’ve worn one since the under 8s,” he joked.
Though his advice for anyone contemplating taking the field without one in the future was simple: “Wear a mouthguard.
“I will go back on Tuesday to pick it up