Clyde Rathbone and amazing profile piece By Mike Greenaway

When Winston Churchill was given to extended bouts of melancholy he remove his cigar from his mouth, put down his tumbler of whiskey and grumble these words to his nurse: “Dear God, the black dogs are coming for me. I can hear them, they are coming, damn them!”

He was referring to the black dogs of depression, and many a sufferer can empathise with the mournful wails that tormented the famous Prime Minister.

But the black dogs are hardly circumspect when they choose who they are going to visit. They are dismissively random. Anybody in any station of life, anywhere, anytime can discover a sombre mood disintegrating into something darker.

For Brumbies, Wallabies and former SA Under21 rugby player, Clyde Rathbone , the hounds came calling at the door of his Canberra home not long after injury had forced him into a premature retirement from the game.

He was just 27, a renowned international winger that South Africans hated seeing score tries because he really should have been playing in the Green and Gold, not the Gold and Green.

Clyde had a quintessentially KwaZulu-Natailian upbringing in the little south coast town of Warner Beach, about 15 minutes south of Toti. Fishing, surfing and sport would have been all he knew. The Great Outdoors. His father ran the local jewellery store and his mother was a school teacher. He went to school at less than fashionable Kingsway High but so devastatingly good was he at rugby that a parent filmed some of his try-scoring feats and sent it to mates in Australia. The footage would eventually find its way to the Australian Rugby Union.

But straight from school he went to the Sharks Academy and spent a year at Kings Park. He made his Super Rugby debut for the Sharks and later that year won the IRB Under21 Championship with the Baby Bok team coached by Jake White.

But the Rathbone video had won fans in Australia and an offer came from the Brumbies, based in the Australian capital.

“There were a number of reasons why I left,” a relaxed Rathbone said yesterday in Durban where he is on tour with the Brumbies. “First of all my grandmother is Australian and she emigrated to South Africa, and for some time my family had been talking about returning because of political uncertainity in South Africa.

“I felt I might be stuck playing for the Springboks in South Africa while all my family was in Austraila. Then, while I was out here on tour with the Wallabies a few years later, our home in Warner Beach was invaded in the night and my mother was thrown over a balcony. She was lucky to live and had serious rib injuries. And it is fair to say that the robber was lucky that Clyde was not in the house at the time …!

The Rathbone family now live en masse in Canberra.

On the rugby front, Clyde was concerned that the quota system might deprive him of opportunities although he says he is a big supporter of transformation from the bottom up.

As it turned out, his career took off in Australia and he earned 28 caps for his adopted country. It was all too good to be true. Some would say it was hubris …

Indeed his fortunes turned. There was a series of chronic injuries and months and months of painstaking rehabilitation. In a comeback game, he suffered a serious facial injury and lived on painkillers for weeks. At the time, Brumbies coach Andy Friend was unsure whether to take a chance on the injury-prone wing and did not offer him a contract.

Rathbone retired at just 27 and concentrated on a corporate health business he had bought with his wife, the type of business that sells things like flu vaccines and health schemes.

He had gone from matric into a career as a rugby player and now he was a medical rep.

And that was then the black dogs came snapping at his gate.

“What happens with depression is that the first week or so of feeling down is tolerable because you think it will go away, but the following weeks are worse and because you are not doing anything about it you suddenly find yourself slipping down a downward spiral,” he warns. “It is a monster that feeds off itself.”

He says he knew he had reached rock bottom when his wife left him and suicidal thoughts crept in.

“I had always thought I was immune to things like depression. I thought it was weakness in others and I would just shrug it off … but when I realised that I was seriously thinking about taking my own life I had an awakening. I drew a figurative line in the sand. I had a problem and I had to tackle it.”

Rathbone says he pulled himself out of the abyss by reversing the process by which he slipped into it.

“The first week was very tough, the second week slightly better, the third easier, and so on, and soon I was making quick progress, and you gain momentum when you start eating properly, exercising and following a daily routine.”

When he was back on his feet he bravely posted a blog of his experience on the internet. He posted a bleak picture of him down and out, fat, and looking anything like a professional rugby player. And next to it he placed his “after” pic, looking like a million dollars, six-pack and all, and radiating health.

He carried a narrative under the pics, detailing his battle with depression.

“I did this because I was proud of how I had dealt with it and I wanted to show other sufferers that it can be done,” Rathbone said. “I wanted my suffering to have some value.”

One of the people who saw that blog was Jake White, who had just started coaching the Brumbies.

“I get this call from Jake,” Rathbone says. “He is a very direct guy and came straight out and invited me to come and train with the Brumbies. He made no promises. He just said come and join us and see how you feel.

“That was in February last year and it took me to June to pitch up at training. And when I did, I smiled and said: “Jake I am ready to have a crack.”

by Mike Greenaway