Sometimes a player’s value to a team is underlined best when he isn’t there, and that was the case for the DHL Stormers’ Deon Fourie this past weekend.
The evergreen flanker earned his first Springbok cap at the ripe old age, for a rugby player, of 36 in the series against Wales last year, and there was a feeling that, together with the Vodacom United Rugby Championship winners medal he won a month earlier, would be the crowning moment of his career.
However, it appears that Fourie is just getting better and better, and his influence on the Stormers’ success in keeping Harlequins from recycling the ball with the alacrity that they did in beating the Cell C Sharks at The Stoop earlier in the Heineken Champions Cup was writ large when his departure from the field coincided with them scoring three tries in the space of a few minutes.
Of course, the game was over by then and a fuss about it wasn’t really warranted, but Fourie was the main reason Harlequins spent 90 per cent of the game feeling frustrated and unable to get out of first gear. Fourie, as always, made a couple of crucial turnovers, but some define the openside flanker’s role as being a pain in the butt of the opposition, and Fourie was that against the London-based club.
His high work rate belies his age and he delivers more than just those turnovers and the irritation level he brings to opponents at the breakdown, and it was the pacy looseforward who was up to take Hacjivah Dayimani’s pass for the first try in the round of 16 game at DHL Stadium after just two minutes of play. Later in the first half, he spun out of a maul to score the team’s third try and complete his own brace.
More and more, Fourie is going from being an outside chance for the Rugby World Cup squad to an almost certain choice.