At the end of a week where Salmaan Moerat’s departure from the DHL Stormers had been announced, watching the Sale Sharks take the field in their Investec Champions Cup quarterfinal against Leinster provided a jolt to the memory and a reminder of why the South African challenge in the competition still falls short.
Moerat, for some reason derided by armchair critics but rated highly by those who play with and against him and enough by Springbok coach Rassie Erasmus for him to be seen as an alternative Springbok captain, will play for La Rochelle from next season. So you can add Ronan O’Gara, two times Champions Cup winning coach, to that list of admirers too.
He’s not the only lock leaving a South African franchise, or even leaving the Stormers. Ruben van Heerden, a teammate of Moerat at the Cape club for the last few seasons, is set to play against Moerat in the French Top 14 next season as he takes up a contract with Montpellier. That was a move announced some time ago by Montpellier.
And no sooner had Moerat’s departure been announced, something that the Stormers director of rugby John Dobson admitted he had been a bit blindsided by, than it was confirmed that Ruan Nortje was leaving the Vodacom Bulls for Japan. It had been rumoured the Bok and Bulls captain was going on a sabbatical, but it appears to be for good.
THREE DEPARTURES JOIN A PHALANX OF LOCKS ALREADY OVERSEAS
That’s three experienced locks lost to overseas clubs in a short space of time, and yet those who watched the Sale version of the Sharks go down to Leinster would have been reminded that’s only part of the story. Ernst van Rhyn? Remember him? He was an age-group captain and good enough when playing for the Stormers, either as a lock or a flank, for one of the beaten visiting captains to DHL Stadium a few years back to say “You can see why he’s an international player”.
Except that was wrong. Van Rhyn hasn’t played for the Springboks. And while he did captain the Stormers occasionally, he was seldom seen as a first choice team member, either at lock or loose-forward, by the Stormers. Yet there he was this past weekend reminding of his existence by not only fronting as a No 4 lock for Sale but also captaining them.
There’s a phalanx of local locks playing overseas - Lood de Jager, Franco Mostert, the now injured RG Snyman, you can add in Munster based Bok and Ireland duo international Jean Kleyn, and also the highly capable JJ van der Mescht, who was the other outstanding lock at the 2016 Craven Week at Kearsney College where Moerat made his first statement.
THERE ARE DIFFERENT TYPES OF EXPORTS
The game at the AVIVA Stadium immediately followed the quarterfinal in Glasgow, where Toulon pulled off a shock but thoroughly deserved win over the more favoured Warriors. Dave Ribbans, man of the match the week before against the Stormers, was the Toulon captain.
Of course the product of Bishops has played for England too, which cues the reminder that there are different types of SA expats playing overseas - those that are still aligned with this country and those, like Ribbans, who will become eligible for the Boks next year if England don’t use him in the meantime, and the Glasgow wing Kyle Steyn, who plays for Scotland.
There are so many players educated and weaned onto rugby in this country strutting their stuff for overseas clubs that should hardly be surprising that, while this season there was the appearance of improvement in the SA challenge in the competition, the local challenge is still some way short of being one that threatens the top teams. And that’s before we even look at the many players playing in Japan.
Toulon don’t just have Ribbans playing for them, they have a whole host of other internationals, like the two Italian backline players, flyhalf Tomas Albornoz and centre Nacho Brex, England tighthead Kyle Sinckler, Scotland scrumhalf Ben White and another Italian in Paolo Garbisi. Former All Black centre Ma’a Nonu, now 43, also of course on their books.
SALE’S DURBANITES WOULD MAKE A DIFFERENCE TO MASOTTI’S TEAM
Now let’s turn our attention back to the Sale team that played Leinster. Skipper Van Rhyn was not the only influential SA player in the team. In fact, the chief honcho of the Hollywoodbets Sharks’ Marco Masotti, who infamously referred to Sale as the Sale Guppies before the Durban Sharks played them earlier this year, might be excused if he considers his club to be in a supply relationship with the England team.
Jacques Vermeulen, Dan du Preez, Robert du Preez and replacement centre Marius Louw, who arrived at Sale via a stint at the Lions, are all players who, were they still based in South Africa, could help alleviate the depth problem that contributes to there being such a wide chasm between the first choice Sharks team and the alternative one that was knocked out of the EPCR Challenge Cup in the round of 16.
The third Du Preez brother, Jean-Luc, was also at Sale until a season or so ago.
Salmaan Moerat will leave Cape Town at the end of the current season to take up an opportunity in France.
— DHL Stormers (@THESTORMERS) April 8, 2026
'I grew up dreaming of playing for this team and the memories I have will stay with me forever'
Full story: https://t.co/ovDiJpDIg9 pic.twitter.com/JDkhROhRru
EVEN GLASGOW ARE OUT-RESOURCED BY THE FRENCH JUGGERNAUTS
To compete across two fronts is difficult. I was looking forward to seeing if Glasgow could do it as they were heading to a space where they would have been playing a Champions Cup semifinal in the midst of their quest for top spot on the final URC log. Toulon put an end to that, although maybe the result in the Champions Cup quarterfinal actually did answer the question.
Glasgow’s unexpected defeat to Toulon could well have been contributed to by a sub-conscious self management by players who were looking at playing without a break until the end of June if they were going to win both the Vodacom URC and Champions Cup competitions.
Competing on two fronts may be a bridge too far even for Glasgow, who just don’t boast the financial power of the French clubs in particular, with Leinster arguably being the only team outside of France, because all the Irish international players tend to be concentrated in Dublin, who have a realistic chance of challenging to be champions in the elite European competition.
EVEN HARDER FOR LOCAL TEAMS
Glasgow don’t have the squad size or depth to have mixed and matched selections between their domestic competition and the European competition like the French clubs can, and given the continued outflow of talent from SA clubs - Nortje is of course not the only top player leaving the Bulls - it is even harder for the local teams.
The challenge is to keep producing talented new players and the conveyor belt, or pipeline, does now appear to be working better than it ever has. The Stormers do have some good young locks coming through, such as Junior Bok captain Riley Norton, and maybe Nortje’s departure will accelerate the growth of the highly promising JF van Heerden, who has hardly been used since Johan Ackermann became Bulls coach.
But it is the experience that is lost that is the problem, as well as the dent to the squad depth that is sustained every time a top player leaves. Squad depth is imperative if the SA teams are ever to effectively compete across two fronts in Europe and it is why the outflow of player remains the biggest stumbling block to SA making a proper fist of their European challenge.