THE image of a professional sportsman revolves around fitness and robust good health. Try telling that to Rory Sutherland, though, as he makes his way back from 14 months out injured, two of them spent so badly incapacitated he could barely make it out of bed on his own.
It was the sort of devastating health crisis that would have left anybody feeling depressed, but when you make your living from being stronger and fitter than those around you, the effects are even worse.
Even more so when you consider the high that Sutherland had been on just before the problems struck. The prop had been plucked out of obscurity to win his first professional contract with Edinburgh and had gone from there to the fringe of the national side in a little more than a year.
He was added to the Scotland squad before the end of the 2015 World Cup, winning his first cap in the Six Nations a few months later and making his first start on that summer’s tour to Japan. All the way from amateur rugby at Gala to national honours in less than two years.
It was remarkable, but unravelled even faster. “It was the Harlequins game at home [in the European Challenge Cup] – in the warm-up,” he recalled. “I’d warmed up for maybe five or 10 minutes. We do a couple of sprints just to get some air into the lungs, and when I took off, my aductor [muscle] just pinged off the bone.
“It was a week before I got a checkup down in London, and had my operation a week later. After the operation I was bedbound for a month. I then got a really bad infection [in the surgical wound] so I had to go back down again.
“They repaired that but I was in bed for another couple of months. After that, it was just slowly building into rehab, doing longer sessions, gym work and then taking baby steps into running. It was a long process.”
When he says bedbound, he is not exaggerating. Doing anything other than just lying there, thinking and worrying, was beyond him.
“I couldn’t have got through that time without my girlfriend Tammy. She was getting up in the morning, seeing to the kids [Mason, 5 and Hamish, 16 months] and then having to come and see to me to get me up out of bed,” he recalled.
“It was a tough two months. It was hard on the kids. Really hard, hard on the family. It was very frustrating for everybody because they are too young to understand.
“Credit to the doctors and physios. It was a hard time for me coming through rehab but they kept me going. The lads were very supportive when I was in and around the club and that helped. There were tough days – but generally the atmosphere has been good.”
He has emerged in remarkably fine fettle, starting back playing a couple of club games for his native Hawick before making his club comeback against the Ospreys at the start of November and doing well enough to be added as cover to the Scotland training squad later that same month.
With two runs from the bench for Edinburgh and two starts, he is beginning to get back to the kind of form he was in before all the problems started, though he acknowledges that while he was away life has got even tougher at both club and national level with Allan Dell and Darryl Marfo coming through as additional competition for both while Jamie Bhatti has emerged at Glasgow Warriors as serious competition for the Scotland spot.
“Right now I feel really good,” Sutherland said. “Obviously, it has been a long and frustrating year for me, but I feel really good. My groin is good now so I’m back to full fitness.
“All credit to Darryl [Marfo], but it is something to give me a kick up the backside to kick on. There’s a lot of competition at the club so I need to stay focused and make sure I’m at the top of my game.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here