One of the most colourful and legendary Blue Bulls of all time, Fiks van der Merwe, has died in Pretoria at the age of 88, family members confirmed on Monday.
He was also the second-oldest living Springbok.
Van der Merwe, whose career was curtailed when he served in North Africa during World War II, where he won a military medal for gallantry, played on the flank in the Springboks’ first post-war Test against the All Blacks in 1949.
An ankle injury, however, brought his international career to a premature end — and he never played for South Africa again.
But it was as an inspirational captain of Northern Transvaal, as the Bulls were known in those days, that Van der Merwe is best remembered. With fellow police officer and pre-war Springbok Lukas Strachan, he was one of Pretoria’s first great rugby heroes, as famous in his heyday as Hannes Brewis, Thys Lourens and Naas Botha.
Van der Merwe’s exploits in the notorious Stalag Luft IVb prison camp in Germany are equally renowned.
As captain of the ”Springboks”, he led them to a clean sweep of a tournament in which a combined England-Scotland-Ireland outfit and a Wales side also took part — thrilling matches which were watched by 10 000 partisan prisoners-of-war.
After his retirement, Van der Merwe coached Pretoria’s Iscor Rugby Club for some years. He is survived by a son, Barney, daughters Petra and Naomi and seven grandchildren. A second son, Marius, a baseball Springbok, died in 1996. — Sapa