Dyantyi makes first start for Sharks, SA franchises search for rare European wins

The Springboks' ongoing trophy tour of South Africa may be cause for celebration throughout the country, but for one man it's a front and centre reminder of what could have been.

Thanks to a four-year drugs ban, Dyantyi has missed out on immortality as the Boks won not one but two World Cups in his absence, with a British and Irish Lions series victory thrown in between the world titles.

Dyantyi, who was World Rugby's Breakthrough Player of the Year in 2018, has recently embarked on the winding road to picking up the pieces of a promising career stalled as soon as it had taken off, thanks to the adverse finding of three steroids - methandienone, methyltestosterone and LGD-4033 - in his urine in 2019.

Despite steadfastly maintaining that he never knowingly took the offending substances, Dyantyi was banned for four years, which triggered one of the more spectacular falls from grace in the game.

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As the game's future, Dyantyi - who had scored six tries in his 13 Tests in 2018 - lost his place in the Bok team to the man destined to be the first Springbok to score a try in a World Cup final, Makazole Mapimpi, and suffered the ostracisation reserved for players who test positive for performance enhancing drugs.

Now with the Sharks since June, the 29-year-old is making the first steps back to redemption with his first start in four years in the Durban franchise's United Rugby Championship (URC) match against the Ospreys on Friday night, having come off the bench in last weekend's defeat to Irish club side Leinster.

Adding more significance to the gifted winger's return is the historic nature of the clash as the SA and Welsh sides are the first teams to feature in a URC game