I feel like I've spent my entire week in ice.
I've been using a gadget called 'game ready' which is an ice-compression machine. You put water and ice in it and strap it on to your quad. The water comes through a tube and the idea is that it compresses and ices the leg at the same time. From Saturday night to Tuesday night, I had to use it every two hours - that included setting my alarm for every two hours during the night. It's not fun when it's 2am or 4am and the phone alarm comes on, but you do whatever it takes.
The dead leg happened on the first contact of the tour. We won a lineout off the kick-off and I took the ball up. If I had come in tight I'd have gone straight through but I took the ball on a wide angle and I ran into their centres. You can see the bruises where I caught a knee and a shoulder on my right quad - two for the price of one. After two-and-a-half months of rehab on my groin I was feeling great, too. Just my luck - first carry, dead leg!
When you get a bad dead leg it balloons and swells immediately while you're playing. Usually you can run it off and then get some treatment in the changing rooms at half-time but this one was too bad. I was getting ball in space, which I've been craving all year, so it was gutting to come off. But there was no point hobbling around the pitch and not doing the job properly.
When I got back on the training pitch my legs were so stiff I felt like a giraffe running around. The stretching and rehab is all quite painful because you've really got to get deep into the muscle. Next comes the Compex machine which is an electric muscle stimulator I've also been using every three hours. You put little electric panels on your legs and it gets the muscle moving. The fluid is on my knee right now and I like to sleep on my side so when I wake up and straighten my leg it's agony.
Responsibility: North has helped out the kit manWhile we were in Canberra this week we trained at the Australian Institute of Sport which is a really impressive facility. Using the pool and spa and the way it was all organised reminded me a bit of Poland. A few of us started getting flashbacks to those training camps - not good ones, either.
There is a casino next door to the hotel here but gambling isn't my thing. We are lucky enough to be in a position where we can afford to gamble a little bit of money here or there but my old man's a Yorkshireman and very much a believer in saving your money. He's given me that as one of his traits. Whatever you earn, you keep and you don't just throw it away on silly things.
I gave Harry Robinson a few lessons on the story behind the spoon. He has to carry it around the place as the youngest member of the tour and he didn't know much about it. He's only a year younger than me but it's nice to have someone else looking after it. As I'm sure you've heard, mine was stolen for three days at the World Cup and I've given him some tips on making sure that doesn't happen.
Last year I remember being the spoon-carrier and having to do laundry. I got all the rubbish jobs like cleaning up the rooms. I'm not a senior player now or anything but I've got a bit more responsibility. I'm still a duty boy though, which means helping out the kit man when he needs a hand at training.
We are playing under a roof in Melbourne so it will be like being back in Cardiff. There was a league game played there the other day under the roof and apparently the players complained about losing the ball in the light with high kicks. I say just focus a bit more! It's been raining so having the roof is good - it means both sides can chuck the ball about a bit.
This is a must-win game but the World Cup showed we perform better as underdogs. We relish it when people write us off. There's been a few changes up front and I think that experience can really help us. We are not used to the speed of game down here and we got caught out, but in the second half it was completely different. They are trying to finish the series off and we're trying to keep it alive. That's why it's going to be a really good game to play in.
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