AS the camera pans down the line of players before any international, you can see a range of emotions. Determination, pride, fear, passion; maybe something different, maybe a stoic, but probably futile, attempt to keep their feelings from showing at all.

If you get a chance, though, find a recording of the anthems before the Italy Test in Singapore and take a look at WP Nel, the Scotland prop. There was a man struggling to hold it all in.

Hardly surprising. Only six months earlier he had to confront the possibility that rugby was over for him. He would never play again, never be in the middle for these special moments, never pit himself against the best in the world to help his adopted country.

"Last Saturday for me was just so emotional," he revealed as the team arrived in Sydney for the second Test of their summer tour. "It made me realise I really was back – this is it now. When I got on the pitch I felt I was back and fine. The build up to the anthems was the most emotional point. Thinking: 'I am back; this is good'."

Neck injuries are the ultimate nightmare for a prop. When the packs come together for a scrum there is the better part of a tonne of muscle on each side driving as hard as it can. All that immense pressure goes through the shoulders and necks of the six front row, mostly though the four props. Any damage or risk of damage is more than painful, it can be life threatening.

So imagine Nel's state of mind when he picked up exactly that kind of injury. A disk between two bones in his neck got knocked out of place. He first did it in the European Challenge Cup match against Harlequins last October and for several months was told all it needed was plenty of rest and everything would slip back into place.

He admits there were still niggling doubts when he did make his comeback. They were justified. He lasted 27 minutes, coincidentally in the return match in the same competition, before it went again.

"It has been tough, it was tough. It was really mentally tough," Nel recalled. "The worst bit was when I was thinking it was the end; 'I am not going to make it anymore'. When I went to see the surgeon, though, he was quite confident he could fix this. That gave me a bit of hope and I worked hard.

"After that second injury, that was the moment. In the build-up and stuff I could feel I was not in the right frame of mind. When it happened again I thought to myself, 'this is the end'. It was a tough week with the build up to the specialist and with the family but the surgeon was confident and here I am.

"I never quite got so far to think 'what is next, what can I do?' That week was more on that mental side,waiting to see what the specialist would say. It was my first bad injury so it was quite tough but I was thinking about what Dicko [Alasdair Dickinson, the Scotland loosehead] went through, it is almost like a year for him now.

"Fraser McKenzie [the Edinburgh lock] went through the same thing too. I was lucky with him around me to talk about it. There were good people around me to encourage me."

Still, he had that week when all he knew was that he had done everything he had been told would cure the neck and it had not worked. When he did see the specialist, though he was told surgery would cure it, it did involve operating on the delicate tissue round the spinal cord. "It is not fun but the specialist knew what he was doing," Nel noted laconically.

The operation worked and, as he pointed out, if he had been playing in France he would have been expected back after only three months, not the five that he got under the Scottish set-up. That, and the way his family have settled into Edinburgh, are the main reasons he signed a deal to stay.

He got his first rugby action in a half-hour cameo for the Barbarians against England, but as far as he was concerned, last Saturday was the real comeback. "The Barbarians game was nothing – it was a special game but I didn't have my team-mates around me. For me, last Saturday was just so emotional. It made me realise I was really back. This is it now. When I got on the pitch I felt I was back and fine," he said.

"I couldn’t allow myself to think the worst was going to happen again – then I would be in two minds. It was fine from the start and it felt good. The scrum was encouraging. It was great to be back and be able to kick on from where I left off."

He returns to a side stronger than the one he left. While he was away, Zander Fagerson stepped up and now the days when Nel had to play the full 80 minutes because there was no other tighthead the coaches trusted are over.

While Nel scrummed pretty well against Italy, he was not as prominent in the open as he is usually, so there is more to come – if he has the mental strength to come through the dark times in January and February, though then there is no doubt he will have the mental strength to make sure all parts of his game hits the heights again after its brush with the abyss.The Herald: