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.”