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Rory Sutherland: From depression and a wheelchair to going on Lions

By Liam Heagney
(Photo by Steve Haag/PA Images via Getty Images)

It was incredible to see how Rory Sutherland comfortably fitted in on the recent Lions tour, the 29-year-old putting his encouraging Scotland form to very good use by forcing his way into selection for two of the three Test matches versus the Springboks. What the pictures from Cape Town couldn’t convey, though, was the loosehead’s inspiring journey to even make it in the pro ranks. 

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He was an apprentice engineer, working on-site when he first took the call from Edinburgh offering him a half-professional, half-development contract to step into the paid ranks. Then came the trauma of a miserable time with injuries that led to depression, saw him confined to a wheelchair and even have specialists tell him to knock rugby on the head, that he was finished.

Sutherland somehow refused to buckle but even when he emerged out the other side of all the dark days and the painful injuries, he still had a mountain to climb as Richard Cockerill, his Edinburgh boss from 2017 onwards, simply didn’t fancy him beyond a couple of minutes here and there off the bench. They just didn’t see eye to eye and it seemed destined to end in tears. Except it didn’t.

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The prop managed to get a run in the side around Christmas 2019 and that led to a first Scotland call up since 2016. Thirteen Test caps later, Sutherland was then chosen by Warren Gatland to tour with the Lions and now he is preparing for a Worcester debut this weekend versus Exeter following an eye-catching decision this summer to move south of the border. 

It was July 1, when he was already in South Africa, when the deal was officially announced, Sutherland joining fellow Lions pick Duhan van der Merwe in feeling their career would be best served at the Warriors rather than sticking by an Edinburgh outfit that ironically called it quits with its boss Cockerill in July. 

“There weren’t negotiations still going on then,” Sutherland told RugbyPass when on deck at this week’s Worcester briefing. “We had been discussing it for quite a while before that. There was a lot going on at that point with being selected for the Lions. It was a busy time in my life.” That’s not a complaint, by the way. Given the arduous Sutherland journey to making himself a Lions candidate, he will take being busy any day to the idle days of old where he was saddled with worry that his career was at an inescapable dead end.  

“I came into professional rugby with an unconventional route where I did an apprenticeship in engineering first and I was actually working when I got a phone call from Edinburgh, they asked me to come up for a trial so I went in for a trial and they offered me a half-professional, half-development contract so I took it,” he explained, winding the clock back to how it all started for him in the Scottish capital under Alan Solomons, the coach who is now the Worcester director of rugby.  

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“At that time I got very lucky in the pre-season where two looseheads went down so I got quite a lot of game time. I have got Alan to thank for that, he gave me a lot of opportunities when I first came into the professional game but I struggled a little with my groin and I ignored it for a long time, probably two years.

“I had just come back from a tour with Scotland and was warming up for a game against the Harlequins. I had gone sprinting in the warm-up and both my adductor tendons came off the bone so I had to get a bilateral groin reconstruction which took about 14 months to come back from and at that time there was a change of coach, that was when Richard Cockerill came in. 

“I didn’t have a very good first impression with him, being injured and trying to come back and be fit. I didn’t get many opportunities for that period from 2016, 2017 through to about 2019 where I got a couple of opportunities at Christmas time and saw myself in the Six Nations squad in 2020. I have never really looked back since. I’ve had good consistent game time since then and was fortunate enough to go on a Lions tour.”

There can be no glossing over the adversity encountered before it all came right. “Mental health, it’s important that it is recognised more in rugby now because it does exist and I know it’s a very grey area because for me if I was to talk about my experience I would say depression and anxiety and all those things, you have to experience and feel it to know what it is.

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“After my operation, I went through sort of a month’s bed rest and I spent some time in a wheelchair as well and was talking to some specialists that were saying, ‘Never think about rugby again, forget about rugby and think about having a normal life’.

“It was a lot to take in and it was a really hard time. If you asked me to tell you how I got through it I couldn’t. I just did (get through it), I got to the other side of it and it was a tough time. I can’t thank my family enough and my wife and kids for getting me through that time. It was tough.”

The good times then followed. “It was a huge build-up sort of over two years, 2020 and this year when I have been involved with Scotland a bit more and then the Lions stuff. At Edinburgh, I went through a couple of years where I was scraping the barrel for five and ten minutes at the end of games. 

“It was a big build-up over two years and the question was, ‘Is it time for me to get a change?’ I had a lot of experience playing at Edinburgh, played a lot of games for Scotland and I just felt it was the right time for me to make a change in my career, put myself out there and put myself under a bit more pressure, take myself out of my comfort zone (and join Worcester).”

Fresh from his post-Lions tour break, Sutherland is now four weeks into his new life at Worcester and the signs are promising. “Great club, great facilities and getting on well with the coaches. Looking forward to getting stuck in.” His family haven’t joined him yet as the house they will move into won’t be ready for another few weeks, but he has had a long enough period to put the Lions tour into perspective and formulate thoughts on why a series that started so well ultimately ended in defeat. 

“We had a very good camp in Jersey before we left,” he said. “The warm-up games went very well and I feel like we prepared very well for the Tests. In the first one, we had quite a strong game up front and played well in the forwards. We had a good scrum, a good maul and that slightly deteriorated through the second and the last game and we had a bit of ill-discipline as well.

“You can’t do that against the Boks, you can’t let them kick you in the corner and maul you or give cheap penalties away close to your line. They will take those opportunities. We were our own worst enemy at points in the tour but I really enjoyed it, it was a great experience with a great bunch of men. 

“You can look at it outside rugby as well, just as a person learning, training, playing with some of the best players in the world. Learning what motivates them, what makes them train well, their habits on and off the field and even with the coaches, you’re working with top-level coaches. It’s not just the experience on-field, it’s the experience of it as well. I learned a lot as well about myself on tour. It was a great time, a great experience.”

What sticks most in the mind of Sutherland about the Lions? “An example would be the way that we trained. We trained very intensely throughout the tour, maybe 40 to 50 minutes, but there weren’t many breaks within that. With everything we did we did under fatigue and I suppose you learn a bit about yourself there. 

“When you are playing under fatigue you learn to be comfortable while being uncomfortable if that makes sense, trying to learn yourself how to be in very high-pressure situations, almost blowing a gasket and still having your head on and getting through reps and still learning through that. I’d say that was one of the biggest things I would take out of it.”

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Jon 32 minutes ago
Jake White: Are modern rugby players actually better?

This is the problem with conservative mindsets and phycology, and homogenous sports, everybody wants to be the same, use the i-win template. Athlete wise everyone has to have muscles and work at the gym to make themselves more likely to hold on that one tackle. Do those players even wonder if they are now more likely to be tackled by that player as a result of there “work”? Really though, too many questions, Jake. Is it better Jake? Yes, because you still have that rugby of ole that you talk about. Is it at the highest International level anymore? No, but you go to your club or checkout your representative side and still engage with that ‘beautiful game’. Could you also have a bit of that at the top if coaches encouraged there team to play and incentivized players like Damian McKenzie and Ange Capuozzo? Of course we could. Sadly Rugby doesn’t, or didn’t, really know what direction to go when professionalism came. Things like the state of northern pitches didn’t help. Over the last two or three decades I feel like I’ve been fortunate to have all that Jake wants. There was International quality Super Rugby to adore, then the next level below I could watch club mates, pulling 9 to 5s, take on the countries best in representative rugby. Rugby played with flair and not too much riding on the consequences. It was beautiful. That largely still exists today, but with the world of rugby not quite getting things right, the picture is now being painted in NZ that that level of rugby is not required in the “pathway” to Super Rugby or All Black rugby. You might wonder if NZR is right and the pathway shouldn’t include the ‘amateur’, but let me tell you, even though the NPC might be made up of people still having to pull 9-5s, we know these people still have dreams to get out of that, and aren’t likely to give them. They will be lost. That will put a real strain on the concept of whether “visceral thrill, derring-do and joyful abandon” type rugby will remain under the professional level here in NZ. I think at some point that can be eroded as well. If only wanting the best athlete’s at the top level wasn’t enough to lose that, shutting off the next group, or level, or rugby players from easy access to express and showcase themselves certainly will. That all comes back around to the same question of professionalism in rugby and whether it got things right, and rugby is better now. Maybe the answer is turning into a “no”?

32 Go to comments
j
john 3 hours ago
Will the Crusaders' decline spark a slow death for New Zealand rugby?

But here in Australia we were told Penney was another gun kiwi coach, for the Tahs…….and yet again it turned out the kiwi coach was completely useless. Another con job on Australian rugby. As was Robbie Deans, as was Dave Rennie. Both coaches dumped from NZ and promoted to Australia as our saviour. And the Tahs lap them up knowing they are second rate and knowing that under pressure when their short comings are exposed in Australia as well, that they will fall in below the largest most powerful province and choose second rate Tah players to save their jobs. As they do and exactly as Joe Schmidt will do. Gauranteed. Schmidt was dumped by NZ too. That’s why he went overseas. That why kiwi coaches take jobs in Australia, to try and prove they are not as bad as NZ thought they were. Then when they get found out they try and ingratiate themselves to NZ again by dragging Australian teams down with ridiculous selections and game plans. NZ rugby’s biggest problem is that it can’t yet transition from MCaw Cheatism. They just don’t know how to try and win on your merits. It is still always a contest to see how much cheating you can get away with. Without a cheating genius like McCaw, they are struggling. This I think is why my wise old mate in NZ thinks Robertson will struggle. The Crusaders are the nursery of McCaw Cheatism. Sean Fitzpatrick was probably the father of it. Robertson doesn’t know anything else but other countries have worked it out.

15 Go to comments
A
Adrian 5 hours ago
Will the Crusaders' decline spark a slow death for New Zealand rugby?

Thanks Nick The loss of players to OS, injury and retirement is certainly not helping the Crusaders. Ditto the coach. IMO Penny is there to hold the fort and cop the flak until new players and a new coach come through,…and that's understood and accepted by Penny and the Crusaders hierarchy. I think though that what is happening with the Crusaders is an indicator of what is happening with the other NZ SRP teams…..and the other SRP teams for that matter. Not enough money. The money has come via the SR competition and it’s not there anymore. It's in France, Japan and England. Unless or until something is done to make SR more SELLABLE to the NZ/Australia Rugby market AND the world rugby market the $s to keep both the very best players and the next rung down won't be there. They will play away from NZ more and more. I think though that NZ will continue to produce the players and the coaches of sufficient strength for NZ to have the capacity to stay at the top. Whether they do stay at the top as an international team will depend upon whether the money flowing to SRP is somehow restored, or NZ teams play in the Japan comp, or NZ opts to pick from anywhere. As a follower of many sports I’d have to say that the organisation and promotion of Super Rugby has been for the last 20 years closest to the worst I’ve ever seen. This hasn't necessarily been caused by NZ, but it’s happened. Perhaps it can be fixed, perhaps not. The Crusaders are I think a symptom of this, not the cause

15 Go to comments
T
Trevor 7 hours ago
Will forgotten Wallabies fit the Joe Schmidt model?

Thanks Brett.. At last a positive article on the potential of Wallaby candidates, great to read. Schmidt’s record as an international rugby coach speaks for itself, I’m somewhat confident he will turn the Wallaby’s fortunes around …. on the field. It will be up to others to steady the ship off the paddock. But is there a flaw in my optimism? We have known all along that Australia has the players to be very competitive with their international rivals. We know that because everyone keeps telling us. So why the poor results? A question that requires a definitive answer before the turn around can occur. Joe Schmidt signed on for 2 years, time to encompass the Lions tour of 2025. By all accounts he puts family first and that’s fair enough, but I would wager that his 2 year contract will be extended if the next 18 months or so shows the statement “Australia has the players” proves to be correct. The new coach does not have a lot of time to meld together an outfit that will be competitive in the Rugby Championship - it will be interesting to see what happens. It will be interesting to see what happens with Giteau law, the new Wallaby coach has already verbalised that he would to prefer to select from those who play their rugby in Australia. His first test in charge is in July just over 3 months away .. not a long time. I for one wish him well .. heaven knows Australia needs some positive vibes.

21 Go to comments
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