Van Der Merwe was 19 years old when he made his first attempt at the Sunshine Tour Qualifying School, and missed out by a single stroke. He admitted that, “I was pretty broken after Q School.

Back-rower Luke Crosbie and second-row duo Grant Gilchrist and Jonny Gray have also had injury issues in recent weeks.

Simon Stone's new series of paintings, Thrown Together, is an exploration of chance encounters. He uses an artistic language that is, by turns ...