England Rugby's Mike Brown back fit for Quins after illness

The septicaemia illness that has caused Mike Brown to miss the start of the season may have been due to the punishing tour of Australia in the summer with England.

Harlequins' first two games of the new Aviva Premiership campaign have been without Brown in the starting line-up, after Brown was hospitalised by the potentially life-threatening blood infection, however, he has now been passed fit to return to the Quins side, against Exeter, on Saturday

"I woke up one morning with a pain in my shoulder. I thought it was just a bang in training then I started feeling quite ill and was sent for an MRI and blood tests," Brown said.

"I ended up in hospital for five days with septicaemia. I was cold, with shivers and bug symptoms, and my shoulder pain was getting worse and worse. My haemoglobin was down, white blood cells down, liver down.

"I had no lacerations or bites or anything. It could have been a trauma from the Australia tour - I was quite bruised.

"It's been good because I've been able to teat what I want. To start with I was eating anything.

"Coming back, you have to take it step by step and see how you react because the body systems take a bit of a hammering.

"To start with I didn't really know what was going on. It was frustrating because I'd done four weeks of really hard training.

"My weight was still down last week, but I'm ready to go now. Playing rugby is what I'm about."

It was an amazing performance by England to complete the 3-0 series victory over Australia with players looking out on their feet at the final whistle, in Melbourne, managing to gear themselves up for one last push.

Brown believes the Sydney finale which England won 44-40 at the death, shows the character of the team, but takes the Grand Slam and success against the Wallabies as part of progressing England Rugby squad.

"I was absolutely hanging before the last game. Ten minutes before the end I'd taken a couple of kick-offs straight down the middle and took bit of a beating on the floor," he said.

"I was hanging on a bit at the end but although it had been a 13-month season, it was the best game we played there.

"To do that in the last Test when we had already wrapped up the series when we could easily have gone 'nah, nah we've won the series, we're on holiday' shows what this group is about.

"But it's only a start with England. If you look at it, we haven't really achieved much.

"Achieving things is when you start winning multiple grand slams, beating southern hemisphere teams all the time, being number one side in the world and winning multiple World Cups.

"It's a good start and we've got to use it as a stepping-stone. There's more pressure on us now and more teams that want to knock us down."