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'They make you feel like you're part of something, but at the end of the day, it's just a business'
Playing for Glasgow Warriors meant more to Rory Hughes than a job – it was about representing the city of his birth and the culmination of a belligerent determination to make it in rugby, despite coming from a town entrenched in one of football’s biggest rivalries.
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When Hughes received word, then, that there would be no place for him at Scotstoun in the Danny Wilson era, he was gutted, and the Scotland internationalist is among a long list of professional players whose careers have been plunged into uncertainty by the Covid-19 pandemic.
While his search for a new employer continues, Hughes spoke to RugbyPass and looked back on his time at Glasgow, and his spell on loan at Leicester Tigers.
“I loved playing for Glasgow,” he said. “I spoke to Danny Wilson on several occasions and just asked him for his thoughts, because I wanted to stay at Glasgow.
“He told me that he wanted to keep the homegrown players, but that he’s got no budget for me.”
Hughes was never a regular in the Glasgow side under Dave Rennie, and straight-talking Hughes singled Rennie out for some scathing criticism.
“They make you feel like you’re part of something, but at the end of the day, it’s just a business.
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“I believe that once you’re in the circle, you believe in everything they’re telling you and you mold yourself on and off the pitch for this culture and the ‘Once a Warrior, Always a Warrior’ attitude.
“If you’re out of the circle, you’re just left on your own.
“Another problem for me was keeping fit. I came through, got in the team and won Scotland caps, then got injured so I had to start again and find my feet there.
“Dave Rennie and I definitely butted heads at times. I’d go and ask him questions, and he’d say one thing but do another and I’d go and pull him up about it, and he’d just talk shite to my face.
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“It was a kick in the balls – you get so angry that you think ‘what’s the point in being here’ when you’re getting treated like that.”
By the time Hughes went on loan to Leicester Tigers in January, his relationship with the new Wallabies boss had totally broken down.
“I didn’t really care what he had to say and I didn’t respect his opinion, and probably vice-versa.”
While Hughes admits he’d have jumped at the chance to sign for Danny Wilson’s Glasgow Warriors, he was stuck when asked if he’d have played for Rennie again.
“I’d go back to Glasgow because that was my city and my club, but would I go back if Dave was still there? I don’t know the answer to that.”
A loan spell at Welford Road followed, but Hughes only made four appearances before that was cut short due to the suspension of the season. That wasn’t without its frustrations for the four-cap wing, whose last international appearance came in Scotland’s 2017 win over Australia in Sydney.
“You could see why they were struggling,” he added. “The training was pretty poor and, being around all the coaches I’ve worked with, we’ve always done a lot of skills work, and when I went down there, there were some boys who were just battering rams.
“I thought it was all quite biased to the starting team, so you don’t get too much training out of it unless you’re in that team.”
Hughes also made headlines during his spell at Welford Road for a profanity-laden Instagram video, for which he has since apologised.
“If people come and have a chat with me, they’ll know that I’m not that type of person. I think people would’ve seen that video and thought ‘what a dick’, but I’m not – the video was taken out of context and I’ve apologised for it.”
Not required by Leicester to finish the Gallagher Premiership season, and with Glasgow Warriors unable to keep him on, Hughes admits there have been some difficult days during the pandemic, but he’s trying to keep optimistic.
“It has been tough,” he continued. “Some days you are buzzing and you think ‘right, I’ll make something of this day’ but then you think ‘what’s the point? I’ve got nothing else to do’.
“Being part of that rugby bubble for so many years, and then just not being part of it anymore, sometimes you feel lost and you don’t have a purpose, so it has been tough.
“Everybody goes through it, it’s just shite sometimes.
“I try and talk to a lot of people – friends and my family – and that really helps for a bit of reassurance that things will work out, it might just be a new life.”
“If I couldn’t do rugby then what was the point in me being here… it got to the stage where my partner at the time was terrified of coming home in case I’d done anything”
– @mattsmith230 tells @JLyall93 about suicidal thoughts and why he quit rugby ???https://t.co/lhwA6FVdoE
— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) July 28, 2020
The 27-year-old also praised the bravery of his former Glasgow colleague Matt Smith, who spoke about his own battles with mental health to RugbyPass recently.
“I knew he was having some bad days when we were training, but I had no idea it was like that.
“I felt so bad reading that, because it did hit home, and I’m so proud of him for speaking out and for getting help because he’s a cracking boy and he’s got the best personality.”
From the glamour of being a professional sportsman, Hughes is trying to keep busy while he looks for a new club, but he realises that returning to the game full-time in the short-term may not be a realistic expectation, so is looking to other ventures.
“I’m going out and helping my mate doing a bit of landscaping and roughcasting.
“There’s not a lot of contracts out there at the moment, so I’m not sure what’s going to happen. I’ll either have to get a full-time job or get back on the tools.”
Comments on RugbyPass
It will be fascinating to see the effect that Jo Yapp has. If they can compete with Canada and give BFs a run for their money that will be progress
1 Go to commentsFollowing his dream and putting in the work. Go well young fella!
3 Go to commentsPerhaps filling Twickenham is one of Mitchell’s KPIs. I doubt whether both September matches will be at Twickenham on consecutive weekends. I would take the BF one to a large provincial stadium so as not to give them the advantage and experience of playing at Twickenham before a large crowd prior to the RWC.
1 Go to commentsvery unfortunate for Kitshoff, but big opportunity potentially for Nché to prove he is genuinely the best loosehead in the world, rather than just a specialist finisher. Presuming that if Kitshoff is out, it will also give Steenekamp a chance to come into the 23? Or are others likely to be ahead of him?
1 Go to commentsA long held question in popular culture asks if art imitates life or does the latter influence the former? Over this 6 nations I can ask the same question of the media influencing the thoughts of its audience or vice versa. Nobody wants to see cricket scores in rugby, as a spectacle it is not sustainable. With so many articles about England’s procession and lack of competition it feeds the epicaricacy of many looking for an opportunity to pounce. England are not the first team to dominate nor does it happen only in rugby, think Federer, Nadal, Red Bull or Mercedes, Manchester Utd, Australia in tests and World Cups. Instead of celebrating the achievements why find reasons to falsify it pointing towards larger playing pool, professional for a longer period or mitigate with the lack of growth in other nations. Can we not enjoy it while it is here and know that it won’t last for ever, others coveting what England have will soon take the crown, ask the aforementioned?
6 Go to commentsShame he won’t turn out for the Netherlands now they’re improving. U20s are Euro champs and in the U20 Trophy this year. The senior sides gets better every year too.
3 Go to commentsWill rugbypass tv be showing these games?
1 Go to commentsWell where do you start, the fact that England have a professional domestic league and Ireland’s is fully amatuer, that they have fully seperated professional squads at Fifteens and Sevens (7’s thinly disguised as GB), and Ireland have fully pro Sevens squad who loan some players back to the Semi-Professional Fifteens squad (moved from amateur for only a year or so) for a few games at 6N & RWC’s. The Women’s games is a shambles, and is at risk of killing itself by pushing for professionalism when the market isn’t really there to support it outside one or two countnries..
6 Go to commentsWayne Smith's input didn't have as much impact on the last final as Davison's red card for Thompson. England were 14 points up and flying when that happened.
6 Go to commentsBilly's been playing consistently well for 2 - 3 seasons now and deserves a look in at the top level. Ioane and ALB are still first choice but there needs to be injury cover and succession. His partnership with Jordie gives him first dibs you'd think. Go the Hurricanes.
3 Go to commentsIt’s not up to Wales to support Georgian Rugby. That’s up to International Rugby and Georgia. I sympathise with Georgia’s decent attempt to create this fixture. But for Wales the proposed match up is just a potential stick to beat them with and a potential big psychological blow that young Welsh team doesn’t need. (I’m Irish BTW.)
2 Go to commentsCale certainly looks great in space, but as you say, he has struggled in contact. At 23 years old, turning 24 this year, he should be close to full physical maturity and yet there exists a considerable gap in the power and physicality required for international rugby. Weight doesn’t automatically equate to power and physicality either. Can he go from a player who’s being physically dominated in Super rugby to physically dominating in international rugby in 1 or 2 years? That’s a big ask but he may end up being a late bloomer.
28 Go to commentsIf rugby wants to remain interesting in the AI era then it will need to work on changing the rules. AI will reduce the tactical advantage of smart game plans, will neutralize primary attacking weapons, and will move rugby from a being a game of inches to a game of millimetres. It will be about sheer athleticism and technique,about avoiding mistakes, and about referees. Many fans will find that boring. The answer is to add creative degrees of freedom to the game. The 50-22 is an example. But we can have fun inventing others, like the right to add more players for X minutes per game, or the equivalent of the 2-point conversion in American football, the ability to call a 12-player scrum, etc. Not saying these are great ideas, but making the point that the more of these alternatives you allow, the less AI will be able to lock down high-probability strategies. This is not because AI does not have the compute power, but because it has more choices and has less data, or less-specific data. That will take time and debate, but big, positive and immediate impact could be in the area of ref/TMO assistance. The technology is easily good enough today to detect forward passes, not-straight lineouts, offside at breakdown/scrum/lineout, obstruction, early/late tackles, and a lot of other things. WR should be ultra aggressive in doing this, as it will really help in an area in which the game is really struggling. In the long run there needs to be substantial creativity applied to the rules. Without that AI (along with all of the pro innovations) will turn rugby into a bash fest.
24 Go to commentsSouth Africa rarely play Ireland and France on these tours. Mostly, England, Scotland and Wales. I wonder why
2 Go to commentsIt was a let’s-see-what-you're-made-of type of a game. The Bulls do look good when the opposition allows them to, but Munster shut them down, and they could not find a way through. Jake should be very worried about their chances in the competition.
2 Go to commentsHats off to Fabian for a very impressive journey to date. Is it as ‘uniquely unlikely’ as Rugby Pass suggests, given Anton Segner’s journey at the Blues?
3 Go to commentsSad that this was not confirmed. When administrators talk about expanding the game they evidently don’t include pathways to the top tier of rugby for teams outside of the old boys club. Rugby deserves better, and certainly Georgia does.
2 Go to commentsLions might take him on if they move on Van Rooyen but I doubt he will want to go back, might consider it a step backwards for himself. Sharks would take him on but if Plumtree goes on to win the challenge cup they will keep him on. Also sharks showing some promising signs recently. Stormers and Bulls are stable and Springboks are already filled up. Quality coach though, interesting to see where he ends up
1 Go to commentsAnd the person responsible for creating a culture of accountability is?
3 Go to commentsMore useless words from Ben Smith -Please get another team to write about. SA really dont need your input, it suck anyway.
264 Go to comments