SECRET OF SUCCESS
ON HIS days off, Rory Sutherland sometimes goes coarse fishing down at Hawick with Edinburgh team-mate David Cherry. They’ll put out a dead weight and a float, pull up a chair and while away a few gloriously tranquil hours. “Where we go to fish is very picturesque, it’s beautiful. We just sit in the peace and quiet all day. Get away from the world,” says Sutherland.
As he waits for the pike to bite, the 28-year-old prop may reflect on the volatility of a rugby career that had him hooked from the age of seven but which also sent him to the murky depths of despair. Where once he was a fish out of water, now he is a prize catch; a first pick for Scotland and named in a notional Lions XV by no less than Sir Ian McGeechan.
He is engaging company. Many of the questions directed his way are met with a chuckle and the line, “There’s a bit of a story behind that”. Only when asked about ‘his injury’ does he baulk. “I don’t like to talk about it because I feel I’m past that
