Imagine you are a primary school kid, and Springboks come to your house to play rugby with you in the garden.
And when you are playing matches at school, a bunch of Boks are watching from the sidelines.
That was the dream fate that befell André-Hugo Venter, the son of Bok legend André ‘Yysterman’ Venter.
Venter senior played 66 Tests for South Africa between 1996 and 2001, and was the most consistent selection by a host of Springbok coaches.
André was one of the fittest rugby players the game has seen. There are countless tales about his appetite for training. Just one is about his refusal to take the team bus from training back to the hotel — he preferred to run.
This appetite for conditioning made it cruelly ironic when André contracted Transverse myelitis, a condition that soon confined him to a wheelchair.
André-Hugo, the current Stormers hooker, was five-years-old when his father was diagnosed with the illness.
André was massively respected by the Springbok family, and past and present stars visited him regularly. It was destiny that André-Hugo would grow up to be a Bok himself.
The 23-year-old made his debut in the Test against Portugal in Bloemfontein last year.
“Growing up, you don’t see him as another person... he’s more your dad,” Andre-Hugo told the United Rugby Championship media department this week ahead of Saturday’s clash against the Lions in Johannesburg (2.30pm kick-off).
“Most of the rugby stories from his career I hear from different people, not him.
“If somebody says they remember my dad, I get a nice warm feeling, and I know he contributed in the sense that he left an impact.
“Growing up, guys like (former Bok flank) Juan Smith would come over and play rugby with me, and my dad would sit and watch.
“He would always make plans so someone could come over and pass, and kick, and run with me.
“I didn’t understand, growing up, all those names – everybody knew them, but I saw them more as family friends and didn’t have that look of ‘Wow, here is this or that person’, until I got a bit older and started to understand who they were.
“To me, they were just very large men, coming from training, looking very tired, and now they had to pass a rugby ball with me!”
André-Hugo played for the SA Schools team in 2019 after attending the famous rugby nursery, Grey College, in Bloemfontein. He played two years of first-team rugby at one of the best rugby schools in the country.
“When I was playing at Grey, I would see in the crowd Springboks like Bismarck and Jannie du Plessis. They would come and support schoolboy rugby.
“It makes a massive impact on your life when you are playing a schoolboy game, and you see 10 Springboks watching.”
André-Hugo’s performances for Maties in the Varsity Cup caught the attention of the Stormers, and he joined them in late 2020. In 2022, he was in the Stormers squad that won the inaugural URC final.
“A lot of people play rugby for a lot of different reasons... nobody is the same,” André-Hugo reflects.
“Everyone has their unique reason, but I play rugby because it’s one of the ways I connect with my dad.
“There are a lot of things we can’t do together – I can’t play golf with him – but rugby is one of those things where I know if I play, I can give him some joy and make him proud.
“So, becoming a Springbok was the ultimate gift that I could give my father, to wear the green and gold and represent our country.”
But Venter will never forget his roots.
“You must remember the things that made the biggest contribution to your life,” he says.
“And for me, it is the school where I grew up, with its rich rugby heritage. I watch as many games as I can and try to physically be there as much as possible.
“You have to give back where you took a lot from. You try and give back more than you took.”