Centurion Neethling wants to add more to a story that nearly never happened

If ever the word veteran is used prematurely in rugby, it may be when the word is used to describe a tighthead prop. Experienced yes, wizened yes. Long in the game? Yes, that too. But is that expected? Yes, mostly it is, although Neethling Fouche’s young DHL Stormers teammate Zachary Porthen, a Springbok at the age of 21, is a stark and obvious exception to the rule.

Fouche, who plays his landmark 100th game for the Stormers against the Lions in their seventh round Vodacom URC derby clash with the Lions at DHL Stadium on Saturday, is no exception to the rule. Some websites have noted him as a 31-year-old. Unless our maths is wrong, in a few weeks the likeable and amiable - well to media he is, maybe not to opponents - Stormers tighthead will be 33. For if he was born on 10 January 1993, that has to be the case.

It makes him a veteran, as does the 99 caps he already has to his name, but when it comes to tightheads who arrive at the point where they are at the top of their game, the word veteran almost becomes redundant. For as Fouche himself notes, arriving as a wearer of the No3 normally means you’ve been through the swings and roundabouts a lot. Before you get there.

Patience is a necessary virtue too, for Fouche was a part of many Bok training camps before he finally got to wear the green and gold jersey in a test match against Georgia in Nelspruit earlier this year.

“For tightheads, these things often come later. To get that opportunity in my 30s made it so much sweeter. I’ve waited a long time and worked hard for it,” said the product of that renowned rugby factory in Bloemfontein, Grey College.

“For some of us, a dream like playing for the Springboks happens early, but mostly for tightheads it happens later in life. You really have to pay your school fees. In those first couple of seasons, you get scrummed backwards more than you go forward, but you just keep working and refining the art and the skill of it.”

And he continues to work and refine that skill, which is one of the reasons being a veteran in this case doesn’t mean the ceiling has been reached. He reckons he’s still got time to pick up more international caps, which is much more of a badge of honour for the Boks and in this country than it would be were he representing another nation. Indeed, it is not hard to imagine that if Fouche qualified for Scotland, and chose to play for them, he might be heading to 50 international caps right now.

Fouche acknowledges that an arm injury that ruled him out of rugby for a time may have halted his momentum, and possibly prevented him from adding to his Bok caps. He didn’t say it, but he may have a point, for it was the void left by his non-availability through injury that created the opportunity for young Porthen to come into the Bok squad on the recent end of year tour.

“No injury comes at a good time, but you naturally don’t want to be parked on one cap. You want to move forward. I have dreams and aspirations to run out for the Springboks again. I’ll put in the work to give myself the best chance. Whether I’m chosen or not is out of my control.”

NEARLY GAVE IT ALL AWAY

Reaching the century mark in front of friends and family at the DHL Stadium, and with the bittersweet acknowledgement that he’d love to have his late Stormers loving father-in-law, a miner from Rustenberg, to be there, is not quite the culmination to his story, as it hasn’t ended yet, but a crowning moment in a narrative that nearly did come to a premature end nine years ago when he was still at the Bulls.

“In 2016, I was on the verge of stopping rugby. I was in a very low place. I spoke to my girlfriend at the time, who is now my wife, and she told me to keep going. My parents said the same. I stayed on for another season and that’s when things started to fall into place again, eventually leading me to the Stormers.”

Fouche joined the Stormers in 2017 and has not looked back, with the scrum culture that has been developed, and further accelerated in recent years since the return home of prodigal son Brok Harris (now there really was a tighthead you could call a veteran even in comparison to others who shared his speciality!) to double as a player/scrum coach.

“A lot of credit must go to Brocky, who gets everyone to buy in. It (scrumming) is never about one guy. It’s an eight-man effort. We weren’t scrumming badly (before he arrived), it was about fine-tuning to take us to the next level.”

HE’S NOW PLAYING ROLE OF MENTOR TOO

What the Stormers have always had is an enviable smattering of props on their roster, and having the likes of Frans Malherbe (Carlu Sadie too) and, in his early years at the Stormers, in the same position as him, plus the world class Steven Kitshoff propping against him in training, did help.

“Training against Frans and ‘Schips’ (Kitshoff) every day was brutal, but it made me better. I’d walk off feeling finished, but I’d always ask questions. They were never shy to share their knowledge,” he said.

Now that he has graduated to being a veteran in broad rugby terms, Fouche is now doing for others what players like Malherbe did for him. If you speak to someone like the young but highly promising loosehead Vernon Matongo, for instance, he will give a lot of credit to Fouche for the role he has played in helping mentor his acceleration into rugby’s big time.

Big time is where Fouche is now, so it’s a good thing he didn’t step away from the game in 2016 and leave this story untold.