URC SEMIFINALS: Two Bok locks who won’t want this to be their goodbye

When flank Paul de Villiers was asked this week whether the need to prolong the DHL Stormers career of players who are leaving had been part of the discourse building up to Saturday’s Vodacom URC semifinal against Leinster in Dublin he said “It hasn't been part of any conversation”.

But then maybe it doesn’t need to be given the identity of the players who are leaving.

Locks Salmaan Moerat and Ruben van Heerden are both stalwarts and leadership figures, and the same can be said for Moerat’s fellow Bok lock Ruan Nortje, who will be fighting to keep his Vodacom Bulls career going for another fortnight when his team plays Glasgow in the other semifinal in Edinburgh.

Van Heerden, 28 years old and a product of the Affies forwards factory, moved to the Stormers in January 2023 after a brief stint at Exeter Chiefs after leaving the Hollywoodbets Sharks at the end of the previous season.

He was coming to Cape Town initially on a short term deal. Not for the first or last time, the Stormers faced a crisis brought about by injury in a specific position, and at that point it happened to be lock.

Van Heerden settled in quickly to the Stormers team culture and was embraced by his teammates. He thrived in the new environment, and his form for the Cape team in that first season and the one that followed should probably have propelled his name more into the Springbok conversation than it was.

Then this is South Africa we are talking about, and there is plenty of second-row competition and a queue of players lining up for an opportunity.

Ironically that might have changed now, with several of the current Bok locks on the injured list, so who knows, we may see more of Van Heerden on these shores shortly.

But it won’t be in a Stormers jersey because he’s off to continue his career with the French club, Montpellier, next season.

FANS MAY NOT RECOGNISE MOERAT’S VALUE BUT COACHES DO

There’s another irony. A player who is constantly in the Bok conversation, even if he was outside of the squad looking in once the Castle Lager Rugby Championship season started, is Van Heerden’s Stormers teammate Salmaan Moerat.

For some reason many fans fail to recognise Moerat’s value, but he wouldn’t have led the Boks into battle in three of the 11 test matches he has started for the Boks if he wasn’t rated by the world’s most successful international coach of the moment, Rassie Erasmus.

Neither would Ronan O’Gara, the hard to please coach of the French club La Rochelle, have bent his back like he did in getting Moerat to line up with the team that has won two Investec Champions Cup titles from next season.

Moerat is of a higher standing than Van Heerden at the Stormers for he has been the club captain since 2024 and captained several Western Province age-group teams in the embryonic stages of his career, starting with WP Schools (and then SA Schools) in 2016 when Craven Week was staged at Kearsney College.

Moerat occupies a similar stratosphere at his club that Nortje does at the Bulls.

Like Moerat, he has been a regular captain in recent seasons, and he will be missed by the Pretoria team when he is not there even though there is a veritable lock factory always chugging away behind the scenes in that part of the country.

A product of Hoërskool Wonderboom while Moerat is an alumnus of Paarl Boys High, the players are of a similar age to each other and to Van Heerden - Moerat turned 28 in March, while Nortje will turn 28 in July.

They played representative schools rugby against each other and also played senior national youth rugby in the same team. 

MOERAT AND NORTJE MADE BOK DEBUTS A WEEK APART

They’ve played together for the Boks too, with Moerat captaining the side wearing the No4 jersey and Nortje alongside him in last July’s Incoming Tours Series match against Italy in Gqeberha.

They also made their Springbok debuts within one week of one another - Moerat was the first to be capped on 2 July 2022 in the first test of a three game series against Wales at Loftus, Nortje made his bow in the second game in Bloemfontein a week later.

While Moerat was seven days ahead of Nortje in getting off the mark as a Bok, it is Nortje who has appeared to soar higher subsequently.

He didn’t add to his solitary Bok appearance before 2024, the first year of this Rugby World Cup cycle, but he’s subsequently become a regular feature in the Bok World Cup squad.

So we will definitely be seeing more of him in the coming months as the Boks host three Nations Championship fixtures, starting with England on 4 July, before an away game against Argentina as a warmup to the Greatest Rivalry Series against the All Blacks that kicks off on 22 August in Johannesburg. 

BIG ROLES TO PLAY IN RESPECTIVE SEMIFINALS

Moerat, having just recovered from a toe injury that kept him out for several months, should be involved too, and in his case because the Stormers have a good record of bringing players back after they’ve gone overseas, it would be a surprise if he did not return to play for them before the culmination of director of rugby John Dobson’s Project 2029.

This is though goodbye for now for Moerat, as it is for Nortje, and both will have big roles to play as they head into what will be their last games in their respective team’s colours if they don’t win and advance to the 20 June final.

Moerat may only play off the bench in Dublin against Leinster but having a quality lock bringing impact later in the game is a crucial part of Dobson’s game-plan.

Should the two local teams win there will be an opportunity for both to say goodbye on home soil as they will then be destined for a Cape Town collision to decide the destination of a trophy which the Stormers were the first holders of when they beat the Bulls in the 2022 final at the same venue.

As far as can be ascertained it is only Moerat and Van Heerden who will see their Stormers careers ended with defeat in Dublin, but for the Bulls Nortje is joined at the departures hall by fellow Bok Kurt-Lee Arendse, who like the injured utility back David Kriel and Nortje is off to Japan next season.

 And then there’s Wilco Louw, who will be staying in the country but will just be moving the 1 600 kilometres or so that separates Pretoria from Cape Town.

Kriel’s Achilles heel injury will prevent him from playing for the Bulls again but the others will all have their Bulls careers extended to a point where they can play to have their careers at the franchise ended in a fitting way, meaning by winning a final, if they taste victory on Saturday.

If that isn’t part of the motivation for both the Stormers and the Bulls it should be.