Long-term injury had pushed Teifion Osborne to the point where he doubted he would play rugby again.
A posterior cruciate ligament injury, sustained while playing for Hartpury College, kept him out of the game for two seasons and while the love of rugby never dipped, his belief of getting on the field again did.
But relocating to the north-east for work last year gave him the inspiration to pull on the boots once again with Aberdeen Grammar.
Osborne, who is originally from Barry in South Wales, spends a lot of time walking in the Aberdeenshire hills with his job as an Edzell-based agricultural worker.
It was here where his long-term fears about his knee problem began to subside and persuaded him to give rugby another go.
“I didn’t know if I was going to be able to play again,” said Osborne. “It wasn’t until last year, when I was doing 15-20 miles a day on the hills, that my knee didn’t feel as bad as I thought.
“I tore my PCL, which I was told should sort itself out, but it never felt right. I couldn’t go back to rugby because of Covid in the first year (2020), then last year I didn’t want to chance it because it didn’t feel right.
“The walking every day probably sorted it out. I haven’t had any trouble with it since.
“I’ve been working on an estate that’s got a lot of grassy moorland. I’ve been up here over a year now and feel settled. This summer I came back to training and I’ve been flying ever since.
“When I first did my knee, you do think it’s the end of your rugby career. I was at Hartpury and I thought I was going to be able to go a lot further. I got into a bit of a hole with it and thought ‘that’s it’.
“Being up here, I thought I would get back into it and give it another try. I’ve been lucky.”
Osborne scored his first Grammar try last weekend but the moment was bittersweet, given the 64-11 hammering they took at the hands of Melrose.
The Rubislaw outfit are searching for their first win in National One, after suffering relegation last season, and have tasted both sides of the coin when it comes to gut-punch defeats, after their narrow one-point loss to Stirling County the week previous.
“I’m enjoying it; I couldn’t ask for a better setup really, other than we just need to pull our finger out with the scoring,” said Osborne.
“There’s quite a few new boys coming in and they’re making us all feel at home. There’s things we can work on and we’re changing that. The only problem we’ve got at the moment is that at times, in defence, we don’t wake up and realise we’ve got to hit people now and again.
“The other thing is sometimes we’re not keeping hold of the ball long enough to score tries. But when we do have the ball, we’re doing something right with it. We’ve got the potential there, we just need to put it all together.”
Watsonian, who sit just one place above Grammar, are the visitors to the north-east this weekend. The chance to get off the mark is one that cannot be passed up for much longer.
“I’m the type of person that, after a defeat, will think ‘what can I train more?’,” said Osborne. “We’ve had a chat in the group and I think everyone is going to make a big effort to right the wrongs that have happened.
“I do think we’ll be fine. We just need to link it all together.”
