Sam Underhill faces three months out after torn bicep confirmed by Bath head coach

Sam Underhill will miss around three months of rugby after Bath head coach Johann van Graan confirmed the England flanker tore his bicep during last Friday’s 33-17 Premiership victory at Harlequins, with surgery scheduled for Thursday.

Underhill was withdrawn after 48 minutes at the Twickenham Stoop, prompting van Graan to head straight to the tunnel to assess the injury. The Bath coach had already flagged the situation as “potentially serious” in the immediate aftermath, and scans have since validated those concerns.

“There’s a few types of injuries where I just want to know straight away because I know the impact that it has longer term,” van Graan said at his weekly media briefing. “At the time it was very much, ‘look, we need to wait for the scan, but this could be a bicep rupture’. And the scan turned out to be exactly that, so he will get operated on, on Thursday.”

The timeline puts Underhill’s return somewhere between December and January, almost certainly ruling him out of England’s Nations Championship campaign in November — a significant blow for a player who has endured a difficult run with injuries throughout his career.

“It is always disappointing for every player when you get injured in round one, because you have just come through a big pre-season and you are just kind of getting started,” van Graan added. “But injuries are part and parcel of this game and Sam had had a few big ones, and I am sure he will be back as soon as possible.”

Elsewhere in the Bath injury update, van Graan confirmed that veteran hooker Tom Dunn is available for selection ahead of the club’s next fixture. England winger Henry Arundell, who missed the Harlequins match with a back complaint, returned to training this week but remains a doubt, with a decision on his availability to be made later in the week.

“He is struggling a bit with his back so we will make a decision later in the week whether he will play,” van Graan said of Arundell. “We don’t want to put a player on the field who is not 100% right.”

On a more positive note, captain and first-choice scrum-half Ben Spencer has returned to training and is expected to be available for selection in mid-October.