Perspectives don’t change, they shift. Sometimes they narrow to a point where all that exists is an oval ball and a number on a shirt. There it is, the rugby world. It’s where Richardt Strauss had planned to live out his entire career.
Today in Leinster’s offices in UCD we are expecting something grim and stolid. Typical Afrikaans reserve has always seemed a little too Old Testament, can fill a room of journalists with the fear of hard labour. Too often it has taken a hammer and chisel to excavate words.
Stereotypes also cast long shadows and in Strauss an upbringing in the Lord Milner-founded Grey College in Bloemfontein raises high suspicion. A trademark of the elite school is a unique Masonic handshake, the alumni peppered with international rugby players, Springbok cricketers and military chiefs.
Charged and ambitious
Today the handshake is firm with no kinks. His perspective similarly so, although it has been shifting day to day and week to week from when he arrived in Dublin four seasons ago. Then it was charged and ambitious, but there has been another landscape movement and his career sits on hold. In April or May of next year the Leinster and Ireland hooker must start over again.
“The doctor came in and said just relax but it looks like there is a hole in your heart and you might have had a stroke at some stage,†explains Strauss. “To be honest I got a bit of a fright when they said that to me, not really knowing what’s going on. I said ‘what’s going to happen? Am I going to die?’.â€
Outdoor lifestyles, Free State summer heat and a strong sense of place, the Strauss family world in South Africa was the game and it soaked gloriously into almost everything they did.
His brother Andries plays centre. Cousin Adriaan is a Springbok. Richardt, before he arrived in the RDS, had lapped up Super Rugby and Currie Cup with Cheetahs, all of it exotic to our ears. But Ireland wasn’t that distant to him.
Keith Wood
As a kid his brother would point out the Ireland team on TV and particularly the shaven- headed player in the frontrow. Keith Wood was an innovative curiosity. Little Ireland was on the Strauss radar and Wood’s redrawing of the role as a dynamic broken-running player captured the eye of a kid who loved to play ball.
“I’ve an older brother who’s a bit of a rugby geek and he always made me watch Keith Wood,†he says. “I can still remember Ireland playing South Africa and he (Wood) gave the ball a merciless kick down one of the touchlines.
“I would run outside . . . we were lucky enough to have a decent backyard in South Africa . . . and I would just run up and kick the ball down the side of it.â€
At 23, Strauss became an Ireland project player. Detailed to be groomed for an international career in a specialised position, as sure as the gods have a droll sense of humour; in his first game for Ireland, in 2012, he scrummed down against cousin Adriaan.
But long before that cap there was a journey through the quaint provincial grounds of Ballymena, UL Bohs and the killing fields of Clifford Park.
Leinster was his club, Blackrock College the team he played for, the AIL his competition. Strauss’s only start that first season was a home game against Connacht in the Pro 12 league.
Strauss hopes to be back at Leinster in April
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