SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY REORTS


Quiet man biting back



IAIN MORRISON
THE season of goodwill is already behind us but if there is a smidgen of sympathy left in the bottom of your barrel then save it for a Kiwi centre by the name of Glen Stewart.
He is a big and, by all accounts, pretty useful sort of a character to have alongside you on the rugby field. Stewart arrived from New Zealand last summer to play for Melrose and, in the very first match of the club season, he was part of the team that gave Edinburgh Accies a six-tries-to-nil cuffing at the Greenyards. A few months later, on November 17, he had every reason to expect an easy ride in the return match at Raeburn Place. He was badly mistaken.

By an accident of happenstance Stewart found himself at the centre of a storm that Saturday afternoon. He came face-to-face with a man who had three-and-a-half years of frustration, hurt, humiliation and anger to vent and, if it wasn't quite Krakatoa in scale, Tom Philip's performance that day was still enough to have one knowledgeable spectator suggest that he looked like he'd missed three weeks rather than three years. The former Scotland centre was back where he belonged, in the thick of it.



Off the pitch Philip is quiet, almost shy, but he is a different animal once the whistle blows. Against Melrose he stared Stewart down at every opportunity, repeatedly broke the line, made one try and he flew into every contact as though this match was his last. Where Philip is concerned every match could be. The poor Kiwi didn't know what had hit him as the man known as 'Tank' helped his club record a vital 16-8 victory that has helped them climb out of the Premier One relegation zone. Melrose coach Craig Chalmers admitted he was probably the difference between the two sides.



Philip had not played rugby of any sort since May 22, 2004 when he last turned out for a Scotland XV against the Barbarians. Three and a half years later, almost to the day, he returned to the game he loves. It must have been as much a mental as a physical challenge for the young centre who, despite enough experience to fill several lifetimes, is still just 24 years old.



"I had a few niggles with my ankle that week so it wasn't until Thursday evening that I knew I would be playing," Philip takes up the story. "That was the emotional time for me when I realised that this was what I had been waiting for all these years. I went back and told my brother Colin, who I share a flat with. I was very emotional, he gave me a big hug and there were a few tears shed. On the actual day, yeah, again pretty emotional.



"There were times in the last few years when I've thought that this was never going to happen but I wasn't going to give up. That's part of my character. I was never going to give up. Even if it hadn't been rugby I was always going to do something, martial arts or whatever. I don't know why but I just love physical sports, I like hitting guys.



"I've never really expressed just how hard it has been. My dad has seen what I've been through and how hard I've worked, the persistence, the perseverance, the bravery. He used to think I was pretty fearless as a player and I was worried I couldn't show that bravery any more. I was always a brave player but I think what I've done in the past three years has shown that bravery is not just on the pitch."



Few people believed this particular horror story would have a happy ending and the final chapters are yet to be written. He toured with Scotland aged 18 and was capped just two years later. He suffered chronic hip, back and groin pain from injuries which went undiagnosed for years. Coaches and medics alike linked his physical ailments with his Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), a problem that has dogged him since childhood, and came to the conclusion that Philip's aches and pains were psychosomatic; the problems were in his head.



They were wrong; the injuries were all too real. Since 2004 the centre has endured four operations, one knee reconstruction, one hernia operation and two more procedures on his lower back. The first was to insert metal rods to fuse two crumbling vertebrae together and the last one was to remove some of the titanium Mechano set which was beginning to bend; titanium is not supposed to bend. He still keeps a bag of metal at home, the leftovers, spare parts from his time at the not so Kwik-Fit operating theatre.



"There comes a time when you start to doubt yourself," he says of his darkest days, "I wondered sometimes if perhaps it was all just in my mind, when I heard that I had a serious physical problem I was actually quite relieved."



He has worked hard to put that problem behind him. Since November, when Philip was reborn as a rugby player, he has completed four matches, including yesterday's encounter against Ayr, with no serious setback. Still, this is a tale of Tom Philip so the sailing was never going to be completely plain. He tore his hamstring while training with Edinburgh a few months back after Mike Blair, a childhood friend, got him invited to join the professional squad as and when he was able. Philip now insists that his hamstring gives him more trouble than a lower torso which sports the sort of scars Sweeney Todd would be proud of.



For all his problems, Philip looks the picture of health, muscled and suspiciously sun-tanned for the depths of a Scottish winter. He is an ardent user of the gym, and not just the sun bed. Indeed he works at one when his commitments as a student of journalism allow it. He denies that his attraction to physical exercise is an escape from his OCD. Instead he calls his love of exercise more of an addiction than an obsession.



"I don't have a problem with it," says Philip of his OCD. "It doesn't affect my life. Well, it does affect my life a little bit but not necessarily in a negative way. I'm more comfortable with it now. Some of my best friends are hardly aware of the problem, just sometimes it might give me a bit of a sleepless night. The OCD might add to my frustration a bit but then again I get a lot of frustration from other things.



"Because of the injuries I was a bit limited in what I could do so I did what I could do and that was gym work. Since I've been playing again I've toned down the gym stuff a bit but it used to be pretty much every day I'd do something, running, weights or whatever."



He is in such good condition that Philip's claims that he will become a better player than before once he recovers match sharpness are entirely believable. He refers to his younger self as a bit headless and claims that several years of coaching at Edinburgh Accies have given him a much better perspective on the game.



The reincarnated rugby player hoovers up advice from people he trusts who tend, in turn, to be those who bolster a confidence that is less solid than his impressive physique. In addition to his family they include the likes of former Lions skipper Finlay Calder, Ian Barnes at Accies, physiotherapists Bill Taylor and Graham Curlewis, Edinburgh coach Rob Moffat and of course Blair, who brings his analytical brain to bear on his buddy's recent club performances. "A lot of people say things that I already know but just hearing them helps."



Having gone through the trauma that he has experienced Philip might be expected to spend a season or two in the club game, time to find his own feet again after years of sitting on the sidelines. Anyone who knows him, knows otherwise.



"I don't really like R&R," he says with some feeling, "It's been getting on a bit since I played at a high level and I'm eager to get back there pretty soon. If I'm honest I didn't spend three and a half years doing rehab and training myself – I've trained really hard – I haven't done that just to play social rugby. I still think I've got something to offer at a higher level. I don't know when that will be but as soon as anyone shows interest I'll be there to do a job."



Even if he never played rugby again, his comeback at club level after what he has suffered would already mark him out as an athlete of exceptional determination. But his thirst for action was never going to be so easily sated. That he is a driven character is not in doubt, though the precise nature of his demons remains uncertain.



A question mark hangs over his back. If he has the vertebrae of an old man now, what will they be like when he is an old man?



"That's fixed, that's been done," he counters. "I don't see myself as any greater risk than anyone else. Any player can get a dead leg and be out for a couple of weeks. It's not up to me, I'm not a selector, but I think I can get myself back to the very top level."



Medical expertise, not to mention plain common sense, may not line up behind him but those two foes were reduced to roadkill by Philip's force of will in the past and only the foolish or foolhardy would bet against him taking the next step up rugby's ladder sometime in the near future.

This article was originally posted on 6-Jan-2008, 09:10 by Hugh Barrow.
Last updated by Hugh Barrow on 6-Jan-2008, 09:11.