Ex-Boks Leyds and Rhule are the wind beneath champion La Rochelle’s wings

They are both aged 30, scored a Test try each and debuted for the Springboks in the same match in Pretoria in 2017.

Both left the Stormers to play in France and have gone on to provide thrust on La Rochelle's wings as they shoot for the stars.

Perhaps more to the point, both Dillyn Leyds and Raymond Rhule were cut adrift in an era when Springbok rugby was all at sea.

Both, however, found not just a safe port at Les Maritimes but one from which its inhabitants set out to conquer.

Leyds and Rhule have been instrumental in La Rochelle's meteoric rise in the European game. La Rochelle has reached the last three Champions Cup finals, winning the last two.

They've conquered Europe but are yet to claim a domestic Top 14 title.

That Leyds and Rhule are sipping champagne so frequently is a triumph for their resolve. Back in 2020 when they left South Africa, they may have done so with a bad taste in the mouth.

Both were tainted by the Springboks' performances in 2017, though coach Allister Coetzee and the system in which they operated were lamentable.

Leyds, however, played one Test in the Rassie Erasmus era. He was on the left-wing at Loftus in the Springboks' clash against Argentina in their last Test before leaving for the 2019 RWC.

Leyds and Rhule's performances for La Rochelle have been astounding. They have risen to the challenge in a rarefied atmosphere as close to the demands of Test rugby as you could possibly imagine. Naturally, it has given rise to social media musings that they are now ready to return to the Bok fold.

The Boks, however, are well stocked in that department and the men who hold the reins aren't in the habit of offloading.

Cheslin Kolbe and Makazole Mapimpi represent the old firm, while Kurt-Lee Arendse and Canan Moodie have seized the moments presented to them in Bok colours. S'bu Nkosi is waiting in the wings.

This close to the Rugby World Cup that kicks off in September, the Bok management's focus is firmly within.

Still, Leyds and Rhule have done as much as can be reasonably expected.

While Leyds got a look in before the last RWC, Rhule is well estranged from the Bok firmament.

He was dropped in the fall out from the Springboks' 57-0 drubbing by the All Blacks in Albany in 2017. Ironically, it was Leyds who replaced him in the next Test when the Springboks clashed with Australia in Bloemfontein two weeks later. Rhule and scrumhalf Francois Hougaard were the Albany scapegoats.

Rhule, however, had come under fire well before the Albany capitulation.

His inclusion in the Rugby Championship squad from that year was met with howls of derision from those who believed Bok colours look better on Ruan Combrinck.

“Before you establish yourself you will always have doubters who think you're not capable,” Rhule told me at the time.

“If you have the support of your team and the backing of your coaches you put yourself in a position where you don't want to let anybody down. You don't let anybody down whose opinion matters.”

The prescience of Rhule's words is now hard to ignore, as are “Obviously not everyone is going to like the look of the team,” said Rhule, who was then on the cusp of moving to Cape Town in his quest to improve his game and hold on to the Bok jersey.

“I'm at that point where I need to put myself out there. If you want to learn how to fly you need to jump out of the nest,” he said then.

It wasn't the Stormers who provided the wind beneath this wing, but distant and breezy La Rochelle. Rhule's career took flight and reached heights barely imaginable.

Given how attached the team's brain trust is to the incumbents, if he somehow again cracks the Bok nod, he would be the exception to the rule.

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