Etienne Oosthuizen (Gallo)
There was a symmetry about the Lions’ Etienne Oosthuizen making his rugby comeback on a field in France because he was back at the original crime scene, as it were.
On Sunday, the former Brumbies, Sharks and Lyon lock set foot on a rugby field to play an official match for the first time since early 2020 in the Lions’ Challenge Cup opener away in Perpignan, a match in which the relish with which he took to his enforcer role didn’t exactly betray that he was coming back from a heart condition-enforced retirement.
The fitting thing about Oosthuizen’s return was it happened in France, where his heart was, ahem, broken by the news he could no longer play rugby after routine post-Covid-19 tests at his old club Lyon revealed he had myocarditis, or the inflammation of the heart muscle in layman’s terms.
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