KEY POINTS:
Three complete teams could be picked from the South Africans playing club rugby in France, with substitutes left over in a few positions.
Yet just one Frenchman has journeyed south to Africa for the Super 14, even though Frederic Michalak tells us that his countrymen regard the Southern
Hemisphere extravaganza as the greatest rugby show on earth.
There is a very simple reason for this, of course. Although South Africa does not have the New Zealand rule of permitting only players eligible to play for the national team to be picked for Super 14 duty, South Africa does have a sadly weak currency, making it profitable for Jaapies to travel north, but the opposite for Europeans.
And as New Zealanders and Australians have noticed with the exodus of increasingly young players to Europe, the kiwi and the aussie dollar also lack the pull of the euro and the pound.
When Michalak signed for the Sharks last year, the rand was trading at about R8 to the euro. Yesterday it was at R12 and worsening as the country continues its free fall into the Third World, meaning the little fly-half's wages are devaluing almost by the day.
He quite obviously is not in Durban for the money. "I took a salary cut, for sure, but that is not a factor - playing Super 14 rugby is a factor," Michalak says in English that is a revelation considering he could not communicate without a translator for his first month or so in KwaZulu-Natal.
Fortunately for him, Sharks coach Dick Muir's secretary is a French-speaking Swiss and she soon found herself gainfully employed as Freddy's interpreter.
"I had watched so many Super 12/14 games on television," says the Frenchman. "I followed it every year and knew that I wanted to play against the best All Blacks, Springboks and Wallabies week after week, rather than once every two years or so [in internationals]," he explains.
He missed the Sharks' opening match, against the Western Force, because of a calf strain but impressed with his dazzling distribution in the local derbies against the Stormers and last week against the Bulls, scoring a vital try in the latter fixture.
"Well, I am glad those games went okay for me and now I am very excited about moving on to the New Zealand teams. Those first games were not against the best teams," he says.
A hard call, but fair - no French diplomacy regarding the poor-to-middling efforts of some of the weaker South African franchises.
"The Blues will be a big step up. Truly I can't wait," he says. "I rate Nick Evans [his opposite number] very highly. When he has the ball in hand, he is more dangerous than Dan Carter. He is a different player to Carter, asking more questions on attack. I really rate him."
The last time Michalak encountered Carter and Evans was in Cardiff last October, and it was the Frenchman who celebrated long into the night.
Would he care to talk us through his role in the match-defining try?
"No," he says. "I don't live in the past. Neither should New Zealanders. Rugby is rugby. You are up, you are down, and then you are up again - sometimes things just happen.
"When the World Cup was over for us, the thing I will never forget was how we [France] had gone from the greatest happiness you can imagine to terrible despair in the space of a week. Yes, of course, beating the All Blacks was very special, but it also ruined us because we then believed that we had won the World Cup.
"Looking back now, the emotion took too much out of us and we could not pick up where we left off for the next match [against England]. It was the same in 1999 [when France offered little in the final against Australia after dumping the All Blacks in the semifinal]."
Back in the here-and-now, the 25-year-old - who despite his relative youth already has 50 test caps - is hopeful that he can get his backline to fizz against the Blues.
"I came to the Sharks because I liked their backline players," he says. "I saw much youthful talent and speed and I felt the Sharks played a type of rugby that I could fit into."
He is confident that better form for the Sharks' backline will come, possibly against the Blues on Sunday morning (NZ time).
"It will come. These guys are not going to get used to me in two games and it is the same for me. I feel, though, that we are now ready to cut loose ."
