WHEN he missed out on the Under-20 caps that mattered, and with nobody showing any real interest in him as a professional rugby player, Rory Sutherland had to wonder if his sporting ambitions had passed him by.
Then came his break as Alan Solomons signed him up for Edinburgh last summer, and now he is not only playing regularly but has even experienced the high of finding out what it is like to warm up at BT Murrayfield for a full Test in front of 62,000 fans.
If that was a surreal experience for the 22-year-old prop, then so was the way the invitation came about, all thanks to a confusing coffee machine in the players' tunnel at the national stadium. "It was funny," he recalled. "I was in the tunnel when Gavin Scott [the Scotland team manager] game across.
"I asked him how to work the coffee machine and he said 'this is how it works, and by the way I think we might need you for 24th man this week'. I said 'Scotland!?'. And he said, 'aye, I'm really keen to get you involved'. I was really surprised. It was good, I really enjoyed it."
The thing to remember about Sutherland is that he started in the back row, getting caps at Under-17 and Under-18 levels and it was only when he missed out on the Junior World Cup with Under-20s that he moved forwards, not making the now-standard transition to hooker but the far more radical chance to prop.
Spells followed with his native Hawick, Biggar and finally Gala, where the tutelage of George Graham, the former Scotland prop and international forwards coach, was invaluable in helping complete the transformation, before he was spotted by Edinburgh and taken on contract only last summer.
"In the front row, experience has got a lot to do with it, playing against the big boys, learning new things," he admitted. "Now I have scrummed agianst Adam Jones, a British & Irish Lion, against Euan Murray as well. It is good, really good."
Even with all that, to be running onto Murrayfield with the Scotland squad a matter of months later was beyond his wildest dreams, even if it was only as one of the extra men, along with Dougie Fife and Hugh Blake, there to play only in the unlikely event of one of the selected players picking up an injury during the warm-up. The penalty was that they still had to get to Cardiff where Edinburgh were due to play the next day.
"It was really exciting," Sutherland said. "There were not too many nerves because I was only 24th man and I got to go out and experience the warm-up and soak in the atmosphere. We went and did the warm-up with Scotland and when everyone was all right, we went and got a shower while they were doing the anthems. We watched about half the game and then it was a long journey. We got a taxi to the airport, flew down and then took a taxi from Birmingham to Cardiff."
Perhaps it was a saving grace that he missed the traumatic, from a Scottish point of view, finale to the match against Italy, with Peter Horne, the fly-half, picking up more than his fair share of criticism for the missed touch four minutes from time that allowed Italy their final, successful flourish.
Support for Horne, however, has come from a team-mate who knows exactly the pressures on a fly-half and the stress it can cause. "He probably had 80 involvements and to pin his whole game on one is tough," said Connor Braid, who later led the Glasgow Warriors attack at Munster.
"I thought he had a really good game, carried well. The Italians are scrappy at slowing down ball and it is tough to run a game plan around that loose style they were using. I think he had a great game. I don't think you can pin that [defeat] on him at all. He played really well and we are happy to have him back this week. For his first Test at Murrayfield he did himself and his family proud."
Horne is one of nine players released back to the club side for this weekend's home clash with Zebre, which may cost Braid his starting place, but that has done nothing to shrink his wholehearted backing for his club mate.
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 hereComments are closed on this article