The good news from Loftus last week was that ou Frik was improving. The bad news was that the Bulls are still ailing.
Getting ou Frik on the golf tee again after a heart attack last week now looks easier than getting the Bulls out of the bunker: in the next six games before their season is over, they are not even sure of beating the Kings.
By contrast, ou Frik should be striding the fairways again before that.
The old Springbok warhorse's collapse last week sparked concern, sympathy - and the recalling of Frik stories.
The best remains one from that wonderful storyteller Dana Snyman. Frik, then already in old age, had just parked his new sponsored Ford bakkie in Mahikeng when a young man approached and asked: "Are you Mr Frik du Preez?"
Frik confirmed it, but was astonished that he should be recognised by someone so young and in a town where soccer, not rugby, was king. He asked the youngster how he knew that he was Frik du Preez.
"It says so on your bakkie," the young man replied. Dana tells it better, but you get the drift.
Dave Stewart, who was a Springbok teammate on the 1960-1961 European tour, recalls that Frik "immediately became the life and soul of the party on tour", and on a five-month tour a team needs someone like that.
I have known Frik since that time when my brother and I pasted Huisgenoot photos of the team on our bedroom wall. We followed the tour on the wireless with the fervour of jihadis. When the unbeaten Boks lost the last match on the British leg, my brother - on the basis of a biased Afrikaans radio commentary - wept and cursed so violently that he needed to be subdued (and scolded).
Our mother, who had done the scolding, went to apologise to the ladies of the church whom she had been entertaining on the stoep.
"I don't know where he gets those words from," she told them. I think he got them from me.
My own Frik story concerns the Sunday morning after the Saturday afternoon shock when the Bulls (then still Northern Transvaal) had lost to Griquas in the Currie Cup final of 1970 in Kimberley.
The players were checking out of their hotel when a solemn ou Frik came down the stairs, accompanied by the union president Fritz Eloff, who had an arm around the big man's shoulders.
"Toemaar, ou Frik," Eloff was comforting him. "Ons moet dit sien as 'n uitdaging." (Never mind, ou Frik, we must see it as a challenge.)
Ou Frik, recovering from the heart attack, needs to take heart from Oom Fritz's words. The Bulls, too, for that matter.
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