South Africa's Duane Vermeulen on how Ulster stint helped him

FLEXIBLE: Duane Vermeulen during a South Africa training session. Pic: INPHO/Steve Haag Sports/Steve Haag

Duane Vermeulen sits his 260-plus pounds of South African beef onto an unsuspecting wicker chair in the bowels of the Springboks’ team hotel near Toulon and rearranges the sea of phones before him with a lightness of touch and an air of ease.

The 37-year old back row is in the twilight of a gilded career and he knows it. That he is sitting there at all, in his branded training kit and five days out from a third World Cup, is reason enough for the smiles and the bonhomie.