Citizen Roux just happy to be of service

Quinn Roux stands 6’ 6” and tips the scales at close to 20 stone, and yet this is a guy who has something of a knack for hiding in plain sight.

Citizen Roux just happy to be of service

Quinn Roux stands 6’ 6” and tips the scales at close to 20 stone, and yet this is a guy who has something of a knack for hiding in plain sight.

A compilation video on YouTube from his time with Western Province and the Stormers shows a rampaging lock attacking the wide channels and making devastating tackles in open prairie, but so much of what he does now for Connacht and Ireland is done away from the naked eye.

Hitting rucks hard and often, or even calling the lineout, isn’t the sort of grunt work that makes your average punter sit up and scream with excitement, but it is the kind of stuff he performed expertly against Scotland in Murrayfield two weeks ago on what was his first Six Nations start.

“It’s the dirty work and someone needs to do it. I kinda take pride in doing that and it’s good to see that some people noticed it that weekend. It needs to be appreciated in the working environment and if your coaches and team-mates appreciate it, that’s really all that matters.”

If much of what he does on the pitch goes unseen, then that fits with a seemingly laidback character who speaks softly but, it must be said, much more eloquently than the shy, almost monosyllabic youngster who landed in Dublin in 2012. He arrived with little more than a one-year contract tucked under his arm and nobody by his side. Home was an apartment for one in Milltown on the city’s southside and he spent far too many of his early days on the treatment table for his liking.

“It’s funny, I was still so young and so inexperienced. I was 21 and I had never been overseas and I got this opportunity when Joe (Schmidt) was still the coach there. I got ravaged with injuries that year. I still won two trophies at the end of the year, which was really nice. But the trust they put in me when I was injured a lot, and offering me another contract, showed their loyalty towards me so it was a no-brainer for me and it just went on from there for me and I haven’t looked back yet.”

His second contract was for three years but it still wasn’t working out for him by the time he got two-thirds of the way through it. Matt O’Connor was head coach at the time and Roux “probably didn’t get along that well” with the Australian. Cue the move to Connacht which looked a step down for the lock at the time but has since turned into a dream on and off the pitch. Long established in the Connacht pack, Roux and his wife adore Galway and bought a house in Knocknacarra.

All going well, he’d love to finish his career out west.

And after that? Well, he’s now free to stay in Ireland as long as he likes. Roux became an Irish citizen at a ceremony for 3,000 people in Killarney recently and his Irish passport was pushed through the letterbox a few days after his display in Edinburgh.

“It’s life-changing,” he said. Not just for him but for any kids they may have down the road given South Africans living in Ireland can face reams of red tape just to visit other European ports of call. If that sounds cold and calculated then it’s not meant that way.

“It doesn’t feel like I’ve been accepted now just because I’ve got the passport,” he explained.

“I felt I had been accepted years ago, here and in the Connacht environment, and even when I was at Leinster where I was well looked after as well.”

Schmidt’s trust has been pivotal in that. Roux didn’t make the initial Six Nations squad but injuries to others have opened the door and he remains a serious option for Rome this weekend and beyond, even with the return to the squad of Tadhg Beirne and Iain Henderson. Those two, and James Ryan, hold different portfolios to Roux who carried five times for the gain of a single yard against the Scots, but he doesn’t seem to yearn for those earlier days when he got to roam so much more on South Africa’s parched pitches.

“I guess it’s just fitting into what the team wants from you. We have some world-class ball carriers. So it’s not that I don’t want to carry the ball, it’s just that I am fitting into a system and it’s about making the job easier for the guy next to you. If it takes cleaning out rucks for the whole day, I will do that. It’s not necessarily that I am going out there chasing rucks and trying to stay away from the ball. It’s just trying to fit into the system that is best for the team. That’s all it is.”

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