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The tipping point had been coming for some time.

When it arrived, Rory Pitman happened to be playing for Ebbw Vale against Bargoed in the Principality Premiership on a rainy night at Eugene Cross Park.

The Blaenau Gwent club had been his bolt-hole after a drawn out deparature from the Scarlets which became acrimonious and drained his enthusiasm for the sport. But as things transpired there was to be no safe sanctuary with the Steelmen.

Pitman – already questioning whether the semi-professional tier could ever offer him a way back – ruptured ligaments in his knee during the second half and hobbled off to an empty dressing room to contemplate another blow to his self-esteem.

He was so distraught he couldn’t bear to stay for the medical attention he really should have received. Instead, he got in his car in agony and drove himself home to Bridgend.

A couple of days later Pitman thanked Vale officials for giving him an opportunity, but informed them that he would not be returning.

He didn’t know it at the time, but ahead of him lay months of relative inactivity during which he would question his purpose in life never mind consider quitting rugby completely.

It wasn’t until he ‘just clicked’ with a psychologist who he had gone to for help at his lowest ebb that Pitman began to emerge from the mental trough he says crept up on him when rugby was no longer there.

And that was after a painfully circuitous quest to find therapy that matched his needs, a quest that went via other psychologists he couldn’t relate to, hypnotherapy sessions and even visits to a wellbeing and detox retreat which he visited for three days on the pretence that he was going for talks with a potential new club.

“I would wake up in the morning, take my my little boy to nursery then go home and go back to bed, I didn’t want to get up in the first place,” said the 27-year-old.

“I would wake up at about one o’clock and then when my partner came home from work I’d lie, telling her about all the things I’d supposedly done like go to the gym, meet so-and-so for coffee, go for a walk.

“To be honest, I didn’t know what to do with myself, everything I was doing just seemed like a vicious circle.

“My wife and my mam and dad would ask me if I was OK, I’d say yes, I’d nod, they would nod, but deep down I knew I wasn’t right. I had questions in my head like ‘what are you doing, and what are you going to do?’”

Pitman’s willingness to open up about his demons comes at a time when cathartic revelations about battles with depression among public figures are increasing.

How many others are also suffering?

Figures from the world of sport, with its often macho backdrop, have led the way in an encouraging surge towards greater enlightenment and the erosion of social ignorance and stigma.

Pitman does not want sympathy. He certainly doesn’t want to be viewed as a special case because if the last two years have taught him anything it is how widespread mental health issues are in professional rugby.

He acknowledges that far more influential figures than him began the process of tackling an illness that has been largely misunderstood for so long.

But he also knows he is in a position to contribute to the fight against what many see as the scourge of our time.

And he knows this because of the response he has received in the last few weeks to an interview he gave on the subject just a couple of weeks ago which barely scratched the surface of what he has been through.

Despite the brevity of the ensuing article, Pitman received messages from fellow players, from friends and acquaintances, and even from soldiers scarred by battlefield experiences. All wanted to know more about his story, about what support is out there, and to express their appreciation to him for going public.

(Image: Huw Evans Picture Agency)

While grateful, such messages have led to Pitman having concerns about the scale of the mental health problem that may lurk beneath the surface of the Welsh game, and whether there are sufficient structures in place to provide respite to players who may be ambushed in the same way he was.

“I have felt a bit like an agony aunt with the number of people who have contacted me,” said the former Rotherham and Wasps player, who is now reinventing himself in the English Championship with Jersey.

“I have had Welsh players come onto me who feel so low they don’t want to play anymore whether its because they are worried about their form, a bad injury or something totally separate.

“But if me talking about what I’ve gone through helps others and raises awareness then that’s all I want, it really is.

“I do not think there is the support there should be for professional sports people. Never once in my career has a mental health expert or a charity representative come to the club and spelled out what help is available for those who need it.

“I know from experience that if you don’t know where the outlets are then it just builds up. You just go on the piss, you think you can eat what you like...that’s the vicious circle.

“My advice to anyone now who is struggling mentally is to confront it, and by that I mean tell a loved one first, and then if needs be seek professional help. Don’t just hope it will all go away.”

Pitman’s story is a lesson in what can happen to young men earning a living in an environment capable of making them feel 10ft tall one weekend and yesterday’s man the next.

It is difficult not to conclude he underestimated the lasting effects of his strained departure from the Scarlets at the end of the season before last.

Ironically, having joined the Region at the same time as Kiwi coach Wayne Pivac, he made a hugely encouraging start.

On his Guinness PRO12 debut against Ulster he scored two tries and was man of the match. Several more barnstorming performances followed which featured eye-catching displays from No.8 in which he proved himself a menacing gain-line merchant among top notch company.

Pitman even worked his way onto Warren Gatland’s radar, getting invites to the Wales camp to have his fitness monitored and take a part in training sessions.

But the atmosphere soured as factions emerged in the Scarlets dressing room. He was eventually made to train separately from the first team squad and ended up leaving under the blackest of clouds.

“When you have been in an environment like that since you were 17, you train and play with the same boys every day, you go away every other weekend and stay in hotels with them, you eat with them, you get to know all their problems, you get to know their families, they become your life,” said Pitman.

“When that is suddenly taken away you wonder what there is left. When the Scarlets finished, I used to look for things to do during the day but then when I was doing them I’d have something in my head saying ‘this has no relevance’. I used to ask myself: ‘Who am I now?’

“Every day I used to envisage a happiness meter, a quantity of happiness that I had stored for that particular day. What I mean is, up to a point, I could put on a front. It would be smile, smile, smile, smile...and then I was done, I’d shut down.

“When the happiness ran out I didn’t want to know anyone. I would bite people’s heads off over the slightest things, I’d take things my friends said the wrong way and get into stupid arguments. If someone started talking about rugby that was the worst thing. More often than not I’d have a right go at them.”

(Image: Huw Evans Agency)

Pitman coached his old club Tata Steel two nights a week after walking away from Ebbw Vale following his Scarlets nightmare.

In a quandary about his future, he stopped playing, put on a shirt and tie and tried his hand at helping out a friend who owns a bar in Swansea with promotional activity.

Then he went to work for a recruitment business as he redoubled his efforts to forge a new career away from the game. But he found himself slowly being destroyed inside by a feeling that he simply didn’t belong anywhere other than the world of rugby.

Every time he went to meet clients he fell into the same verbal exchange: “Who you playing for now then? Oh, you’re not playing...why not?”

It meant not only could he not escape from the nagging feeling that he should still have been playing but also that people couldn’t accept him as anything else.

Seeking professional help

When Pitman found salvation with his psychologist, who he still speaks to regularly by phone, he was taken aback to learn footballers, boxers, athletes, cricketers were all patients at the same establishment, but that barely any rugby players had ever been in touch.

When the sessions began, Pitman explained how he felt at the beginning of his spiral, how he was feeling right at that moment and what his hopes for the future were.

Gradually a new perspective emerged that centred around a focus on future goals, the avoidance of potentially destructive behaviours and the realisation that opportunity still existed in abundance, so long as he put himself in a position to take it.

He believes anything he achieves during the remaining years he has in the game he will appreciate and respect in a way he might not always have done previously.

“The psychologist didn’t know me from Adam but that was the best thing,” Pitman explained.

“But we got off to a good start. Everyone who knows me knows that I am a real coffee lover and when I went into his room for the first time he brought out this delicious perculated coffee.

“It was a little thing but it sort of helped put me at ease and I realised we would hit it off.

“He showed me videos of myself playing at the top level and told me I could do it again.

“He set me little targets, like being in bed by a certain time, not drinking on a certain weekend and doing a gym session on a given day.

“I slowly began getting back to the things I needed to do to be a professional rugby player again and getting rid of the bad habits.

“I’d do a gym session then couldn’t wait to ring him to tell him. He made me start to feel good about myself again.

“Sometimes he will ring me and ask me what I have had for lunch. Stuff like that is so reassuring because you know he does actually care.

"I've a friend too, John Paul, who has been a tower of strength by ringing me non-stop, asking how I am, what I've been eating."

Pitman is unsure how to precisely classify his condition, pointing out that he finds depression a difficult illness to specifically define.

Yet pinning a tag to it is not at the top of his priorities now.

What matters more is that he is rebuilding in Jersey, he is happy again, he has goals, he feels his life has purpose once more.

“When I first got the approach from them I straight away thought ‘no way’,” he admitted.

“Then I spoke to people I respected and realised that they are not only a very good set up but that this was what I needed to get me out of my comfort zone.

“Being out of Wales has been so good for me and I am really enjoying it.

“I want to make a big impression in the first five or six games and then see what happens. I know I can still play in the Guinness PRO14 or the Aviva Premiership.”

That much Pitman proved during his time at the Scarlets. From where he was in his darkest days returning there would represent one hell of a journey.

You sense he’s through the hardest part now though. The hardest part by some distance.