HEINEKEN CUP: Gerry Thornleyon the young South African hooker who, after a slow start, has really come into his own for the province this season
FOR ALL the player traffic towards Europe, it’s relatively unusual for a 23-year-old to pack up his bags and head north. The likes of CJ van der Linde and Ollie le Roux are more typical South African recruits, either established Springboks or, eh, veterans. But Richardt Strauss is what’s called a Special Project.
He is in the second of a three-year deal with Leinster, at the end of which he will become qualified to play for Ireland.
“That would really be nice,” says Strauss, having laughed at the description of him as a Special Project.
“But firstly, before anything, I realise I have to be playing well and getting somewhere with Leinster and then take it from there. It would be super and a real honour, but there’s still a lot of hard work that has to go in before anything like that happens.”
It’s remarkable to think Strauss played flanker until he was 20, winning his Under-19 World Cup winner’s medal in the position. That said, he is no novice, having made 54 appearances for the Free State Cheetahs as well as another 34 games for the Cheetahs’ Super 14 side.
He just thought South African rugby was “a dead end” for him.
“I started playing Currie Cup at the age of 20, and it went well, but it just felt it was never really going to go any further. They have John Smit, Bismarck du Plessis, Chiliboy Ralepele, Tiaan Liebenberg and Schalk Brits, who’s since gone to Saracens, and I just thought what’s the use in playing 150-200 games for the Free State and a few more for the Cheetahs, when I could come here and have a real good challenge at something new, have some life experience rather than just staying in one place my whole life?”
Le Roux was the contact. They had played a few games together and on foot of a conversation between Michael Cheika and le Roux, the latter rang Strauss. A year later he joined Leinster.
“I spoke to my parents, my girlfriend and my agent, and then Ollie said this is a great club, they’d won the Heineken Cup, they had great players, why not give it a chance?”
Already Strauss can see the benefits of moving to Leinster. “I must say it’s a lot different from back home. It’s a lot more professional in the conditioning and how they manage players. They are much more strict on the eating habits. In South Africa I had takeaways three or four times a week,” he reveals with a chuckle, which seems both wistful and guilty.
“I just can’t afford to do stuff like that. In that sense they are much more professional and then obviously the playing style differs.”
Before he arrived in Dublin he resigned himself to people calling him “Richard”. In fact, the pronunciation of his name is more akin to Rickart or, as his name is more commonly known in Afrikaans, “Regardt”.
“Luckily I was in boarding school as well, so I had heaps of nicknames, and it’s something that really doesn’t bother me.”
He admits that having arrived in November last year, his season “never really took off”. The only one of six Magners League appearances in which he started was away to Connacht, when hauled off after 54 minutes, though there were glimpses of his high skills set in the play-off semi-final and final. He has good feet and hands and is pretty quick with it.
This season, he’s started in five of Leinster’s six games. “I’m really enjoying it. It’s going well, and hopefully we can keep on going like this.”
Now based closer to Riverview and the RDS, last season he lived with van der Linde and his wife in their cottage in Glendalough.
Strauss is the youngest of four boys (behind Lodewyk, Jacobus and Andries) and van der Linde attended the same noted rugby school, Grey College in Bloemfontein.
He was a classmate of Lodewyk, who had a stint with Rotherham Titans and was also the catalyst for his brothers, especially Richardt, taking up the game.
Andries is playing with the Sharks, and cousin Adriaan plays with the Cheetahs. Jacobus was “more of a party animal”.
Competing against physical odds has long since been the norm for the baby of the family. “Being the youngest of four, I’ve had my fair share of knocks when I was a little boy,” he laughs, “and was beat up quite a few times as well.”
Parents Andries, a quantity surveyor, and Colleen, from a farming family, reared their children in Harrismith, a small rural town in the Eastern Free State.
They have a small game farm near the Drakensberg mountains close to Durban in Natal, where Strauss loves to hunt and fish, and they also have a holiday home in Plettenberg Bay in the Garden Route of the Western Cape province.
“I’ve been privileged and lucky, you can say that,” he admits.
His father, though he didn’t play, remains the biggest influence on Strauss’s career. “He criticises but it’s always a positive thing. He would never pressurise you to do anything, and I think that’s the way he always supported and helped us, with all the stuff he did to make us comfortable.”
He acknowledges the influence on his career of Grey, founded in 1855 and the third oldest school in South Africa.
“Grey breeds a winning culture. I think Grey is the school which has produced the most South African school players and the most Springbok players, and the most professional rugby players as well,” he says. “We have so many different cultures in South Africa, but in the Afrikaans, my background, everyone aspires to play rugby.
“Although I must say the support in Leinster has been awesome. I’ve never experienced something like that in South Africa, except for the big finals. I think the atmosphere here at games totally over-shadows South Africa.
“The thing is in South Africa if you lose one or two games they just say ‘you’re useless’ and then they don’t go any more,” he says, with amusement. “Here they stick with you a bit longer.
“But yeah, rugby is the biggest sport in Afrikaans culture.”
Being part of Grey’s A teams from under-14 upwards, the South African schools and Under-19 teams followed, the latter for two years, all the while as a number seven, which in South African rugby is more the blindside flanker.
After defeat in the 2005 Under-19 World Championships semi-final to New Zealand, he was on the winning side against the same opponents in the final in Durban a year later. “It was quite nice beating them,” he says. “It was special. Not a lot of people have done that.”
Clearly a strong-willed individual, when then offered a junior contract with the Cheetahs, Strauss simply refused to sign unless they helped him convert to hooker. Fortunately, the Cheetahs had brought in the former Boks hooker “Naka” Drotské as team manager, and he helped Strauss greatly.
“I must say I was lucky, because at that moment the props at the Cheetahs were Os du Randt, Ollie le Roux, Wian du Preez, who’s with Munster now, Jannie du Plessis and CJ. So I was really protected in my first couple of years.”
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of his game, bearing in mind he only converted to hooker four years ago, is his darts.
“In the beginning I was really stressed with the lineouts. It’s like a goal-kicker, you can’t be expected to hit it every time and people get quite frustrated. I mean, you get frustrated yourself if you don’t get it right, but I’ve really enjoyed it. It is a bit better to have more pressure on yourself some times. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
In the 2006 Currie Cup final the Cheetahs drew 28-all with the Blue Bulls after extra-time to share the title.
“It was quite disappointing because we had the better side and we just let them in with penalties and stuff, so we didn’t know whether to be happy or sad.”
Having beaten the Bulls in the semi-finals a year later, the 20-18 win over the Golden Lions in the final, again in Bloemfontein, was eminently better.
“We were down, 18-6, with 14 minutes left and we managed to score two tries and Willem de Wall kicked a touchline conversion to win the game for us. So that was really good.”
At 5ft 9ins he acknowledges playing hooker was his only hope of survival amongst the game’s behemoths. The more Strauss has his hands on the ball, the better he plays. He does his defensive shift too. In that Edinburgh debacle, Strauss completed 12 of 13 tackles.
Strauss says he has never known an atmosphere akin to the subsequent Munster game at the Aviva, and now comes Wembley at Saracens, with their distinctly South African flavour and in particular his opposite number Schalk Brits, assuredly the best ball-carrying hooker in the game.
“He’s a massively strong centre who just happens to be in the middle of the scrum. He’s a special player. Around the park they’ve got good players, but him in particular. Knowing him, playing (against) him, always you have to have your eye on this bloke otherwise he’s going to hurt you. This is going to be a whole different game. They look to play a bit more I think than Racing did.”
And it’s for games like this, to measure himself against the best, that Strauss decided to be a Special Project.
Richardt Strauss: The facts
Born: January 28th , 1986, in Pretoria, SA
Height: 1.75m (5ft 9ins)
Weight: 98kg (15st 7lbs)
Education: Grey College, Bloemfontein and University Free State.
Honours: 2005 Under-19 World Championship winner and Currie Cup winner (2006 and '07).
Province: Free State Cheetahs (54 games, 14 tries.
Super 14: Cheetahs (36 games, 1 try).
Leinster: 12 (6 as replacement, 1 try).
