Edinburgh v Glasgow Warriors: Rory Sutherland relishing nerves of 'must-win' game

Rory Sutherland made an eye-catching break for Scotland in February's 13-6 defeat by England

The storm-lashed Calcutta Cup had been such a joyless grind that nobody was prepared for what happened in the early moments of the second half at Murrayfield in the pre-lockdown days of early February.

After 42 minutes of poor kicks, dropped passes, lost lineouts and collapsed scrums, some proper rugby broke out without warning. Shock, horror; somebody went through a gap. Clearly fed up waiting for the flair players to do it, Rory Sutherland stepped up.

It all seems so long ago now, but the moment still causes the Scotland loosehead to laugh. "I actually thought something was wrong on the field because I threw this absolutely ridiculous dummy and everybody fell for it," he recalls.

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"I thought, 'Hang on, it can't be right that everybody bought that dummy. Has the ref blown the whistle or what?'

"Then the M6 opened up in front of me and I ran. For the first couple of seconds, I was going, 'I'm scoring here, I'm scoring', then I remembered that there was a full-back and a winger chasing me. 'You're no' scoring here, you're no' scoring'.

"I loved it, though. Not losing, but playing at Murrayfield for Scotland. I absolutely bloody loved it."

'Those 14 months were absolute hell'

Rugby is back, which means Sutherland is back, which means we'll get to see how his fairytale story develops over the course of what could be a momentous year, from a Pro14 match for Edinburgh against Glasgow Warriors on Saturday to a possible British & Irish Lions tour 10 months from now.

Sutherland's scrummaging, ball-carrying and all-round work-rate was so good in the Six Nations that he was a prominent figure when people played the lockdown game of 'Name Your Lions Team'.

Sir Ian McGeechan, Brian O'Driscoll and Will Greenwood all picked Sutherland as the starting Test loosehead. Lawrence Dallaglio said he found it impossible to separate Sutherland, Mako Vunipola and Joe Marler.

Rory Sutherland (left) has battled back from a career-threatening knee injury that still requires strapping

Everybody was blown away by his performances and his story. Saturday against Glasgow - "a must-win" - is the next chapter in what is an epic tale of victory over horrendous injury, anxiety and depression.

Sutherland and his long-time partner, Tammy, got married a few weeks back. What a journey they've been on. The two of them, plus their boys, eight-year-old Mason - "a calm and collected little soul" - and four-year-old Hamish - "who'll either be a brain surgeon or a gangster when he grows up".

The details of his struggle are known and, though it gets a bit tiresome reliving it all again, he knows that it's because of what happened to him in the spring of 2016 that he is who he is today.

In blowing his adductor muscles off the bone and into kingdom come, and then enduring bilateral groin reconstruction, the odds of him walking and running properly again weren't high. Never mind rugby. The fear at the time was that the rest of his life might be compromised by his injury.

His first thought is for his wife. "The stuff she had to put up with, seeing to the kids in the morning and then helping me out of bed, not many people have any idea what it was like," Sutherland says. "She was superwoman.

"That 14 months was absolute hell - anxiety and depression and all other kinds of feelings that you don't know about. I had to see a lot of specialists and most of the doctors I talked to would say I shouldn't even consider playing again. So from going from professional sport to somebody telling you that normal life might not be the same again was horrible.

"I'm not sure if I've said this before, but the first surgery failed due to a bad infection. They had to open it up and go back in. They said they couldn't go in a third time, so when I went home, I was to stay in bed for a month.

"After that, if I wanted to leave the house, it had to be in a wheelchair. I've spoken about all of it before, but I can't get away from the fact that all of that made me who I am. It might sound deep and a bit cheesy, but it's true."

The talk of the Lions is easily put in context. When you almost lose everything, then making grand plans about the future is a bit of a mug's game. "Occasionally I'll fantasise about what it would be like, but it doesn't last long. I snap out of it pretty fast," he admits.

'The demands are huge'

We're now entering arguably the most intense period of big-time rugby in the history of the game. The Pro14 has to be played to a conclusion in four successive weeks, followed by a European Challenge Cup quarter-final with Bordeaux in week five.

Come the third week of October, the show moves to the Test arena. Scotland will have six matches before the end of the year. There'll be more Pro14, more Europe, the 2021 Six Nations and, for the chosen few, the 2021 Lions tour, presuming it goes ahead.

For the elite, this is going to be a marathon run at a middle-distance runner's pace.

Rory Sutherland is hoping to lead Edinburgh to a home sem-final in the Pro14

In his new book, the former England captain, Dylan Hartley, writes of the realities of modern rugby where players "gobble painkillers like Smarties" and are put together "with stitches and glue" before being "chewed up and spat out".

When you read those lines to Sutherland, he understands where Hartley is coming from. "Yeah, absolutely," he says. "The demands on your body are huge. The way the game is evolving, there are demands on players to be fitter, faster and stronger.

"We're looked after, but if you play, train, play, train, it's a very tough cycle to be on. Painkillers, I know how bad they can be. After my injury, I was on a lot of different painkillers to deal with it. Not to train or to play, just to get through the day, sitting at home or walking around the house. Very strong painkillers and lots of them. My family used to say I looked grey, like a ghost. It's a very important subject, this.

"What Hartley is talking about is, when you have a niggle, you will need some painkillers to get through it for the weekend game. It's a dog-eat-dog world in professional sport.

"If you're not prepared to go a couple of weeks of having to take painkillers to train and play then there might be somebody else waiting to take your place. That's the reality of it. If you're not prepared to make those sacrifices, somebody else might and they'll be the one playing every week."

'We'll all be blowing the cobwebs off'

He says he'll be nervous before the Glasgow game. Nothing new there. He can remember being physically sick before games at school. Having not played a Test match since June 2016, he started against Ireland in Dublin in the opening round of the 2020 Six Nations and the nerves came again.

Paraphrasing, while waiting to go out on the pitch at the Aviva, there was a fear of a commotion in the bowel department, if you get his drift.

"I did well against Tadhg Furlong in that match," he says. "I got around the pitch and I got self-belief. At one point, I just said to myself, 'I'm doing all right here, I can do this'. I'll be bricking it again on Saturday. Nerves are a good thing."

An Edinburgh victory and a Munster defeat in Dublin would give Sutherland's team a home semi-final, probably against Ulster. A defeat and the fear of an away semi-final against Leinster becomes a real prospect.

"We have to win, absolutely," he says. "And that's something we've been driving at all week. We're top of our pool and we have to stay there. Glasgow will be doing their damndest to make sure we don't. We'll all be blowing the cobwebs off. It'll be fun. It'll be great to get back out there."