Nine-week ban may have saved Mark Cueto's World Cup

England winger Mark Cueto has revealed his nine-week suspension could potentially have saved his World Cup. Cueto was issued with the ban in April after pleading guilty to "making contact with the eye or eye area" of Northampton's Christian Day.

The 31-year-old is forbidden to speak about the incident by England, the Rugby Football Union and his club Sale until the sanction expires on 7 June.

While he hints at his anguish at what happened, Cueto has at least drawn encouragement from the opportunity his enforced absence gave him to address a niggling knee cartilage injury sustained in training.

Given the proximity of the World Cup this autumn, Cueto admits he may otherwise have soldiered on, a decision his surgeon discovered could have had ramifications. "The fact the suspension may have helped me for the World Cup has been the positive view I've taken on what's been a poor few weeks," he said.

"The injury was manageable, I could train and play, but the surgeon was very happy post-op that we'd made the decision to do it. He was pretty certain that, with the intensity of the World Cup camp and warm-up games, it could have become a bigger problem further down the line.

"Given that I had that window of extra time because of the ban, it was a good decision to have the operation. If I hadn't had it, I'd have carried on until the end of the season at least, as long as it didn't get worse. And then, at the end of the season, I don't know if I'd have been happy to do it so close to the World Cup camp."

Having gone under the knife three weeks ago, Cueto has two more weeks of rehabilitation left and expects to be firing on all cylinders by mid-June. England meet for the first time on Monday before the gruelling pre-World Cup camp begins in earnest in July.