KEY POINTS:
Bob Skinstad's inclusion in the Springbok training squad that assembles on Sunday suggests he will be involved in the imminent tests against England, and if that comes to pass, it will complete one of rugby's more fascinating comebacks.
Skinstad is currently preparing for the Super 14 final in Durban and observers of the Sharks' sessions this week cannot help but be drawn to the effervescent Skinstad.
He is Mr Charisma, all smiles and hand claps as he exhorts his teammates on in their preparations for a match many are now regarding as the biggest in South Africa since the 1995 Rugby World Cup final.
It is the type of grand occasion for which leaders such as Skinstad were born and the fact that he will play in a Super 14 final in the team he chose for his comeback is typical of a Skinstad script.
The world-at-my-feet Skinstad grin is back, all right, and you can't help but wonder if the scriptwriters haven't finished with him for a year that might well end for him with a French flourish.
That is indeed his goal. The World Cup is one of the reasons why he dusted off his boots. He has unfinished business with Mr Webb Ellis.
He went to the 1999 World Cup as the golden boy of international rugby and one of Guinness' chosen faces of the event.
The problem was that he was injured and he played nowhere near his or anybody else's expectations.
In 2003 he fared even worse.
He never even got to Australia. It was a catastrophic year for him - his move from the Stormers to the calamity Cats was a disaster and there was a sequence of injuries.
It was also the straw the broke the camel's back as far as Skinstad and South African rugby was concerned.
His life in the spotlight had never been easy. For every adoring fan (often female) there was a jealous detractor (always male).
The vehement criticism of Skinstad always somehow avoided his actual playing ability.
His sticking-out-tongue got up people's noses, if you will pardon the expression, his intelligent posturings were interpreted as arrogance by the same folk who said he spent too much time doing ad campaigns and not enough time doing tackling practice.
Skinstad was ahead of his time in South African sport and his crime was to dare to market himself and to challenge the antiquated workings of South African rugby.
There was the hate campaign when Gary Teichmann was dropped for the 1999 World Cup so that Skinstad could play No 8.
But coach Nick Mallett orchestrated that mess, not Skinstad.
There was the argument with All Black Justin Marshall in a Cape Town pub that precipitated the car crash that crocked his knee, and there was the occasional pub fracas when anti-Skinstad mania spilled over into the physical.
There was hate mail that grew into death threats and that was when the injured, disillusioned 27-year-old packed his bags.
Skinstad initially played rugby in Newport, Wales but his heart was not in it and after three months he packed in playing and put his energies into creating a South African rugby club in London that would play in England's Premiership.
"The Tribe", as it would have been known, was sunk at the last minute by the English RFU, who ruled that there could be no foreign-owned clubs in England.
Skinstad then went into his dream job, as he describes it, heading a sports promotion division of Saatchi and Saatchi and on weekends he worked in television for Sky Sports, which kept him in touch with the South African game.
"I looked at the standard of rugby and at the talent on offer and felt we should be doing a lot better," he says.
"South African rugby players are the most talented in the world. As pure physical specimens, they are superior to those of any country, New Zealand included. But we have consistently lacked the emotional intelligence to complement the physical attributes," he said in an interview with SA Rugby Magazine.
He posed on the cover with his shirt off, showing that he was still in fine shape and that he has not forgotten how to market himself.
After three years as a businessman, Skinstad realised that the music was "still in me" as he puts it. He thought he was finished with rugby but rugby was not finished with him.
His sudden, enthusiastic return to South African rugby in January was in contrast to the unhappy, silent exit in 2003.
With the Sharks he avoided fanfare, though, preferring to knuckle down and do his talking on the field.
That he has done, reinventing himself as blindside flanker and excelling as a leader and player.
Jake White has acknowledged his contribution at the Sharks and recognised Skinstad's potential to play a key role on the bigger stage.
Skinstad sees the World Cup as a great opportunity for the Springboks, and an event he would dearly love to participate in.
"As a nation we have always seemed scared of success. Why?" he asks. "The Springboks have beaten the All Blacks three times out of the last four in South Africa in the last three years. So why can't we beat them in France?"
