Brok Harris: Take a bow; the numbers don’t lie.
Brok Harris’s career is over after 435 matches, played over 20 years, with a game time average of 54 minutes and twenty seven seconds. Take the biggest of bows Mr Harris, writes Mark Keohane.
Some scripts are written at a greater level than us mortals.
Harris was forced from the field in the DHL Stormers demolition of Benetton a fortnight ago. He did not want the golf cart. He walked off, but with his knee ligament torn he knew it was over. It is difficult to come back from those knee injuries at 20 years-old; at 40 years-old any thought of a comeback would come with a straight, and tightly strapped, white jacket.
Harris knew it was his last walk from the new home of the DHL Stormers and Western Province.
He had started for Western Province in the Currie Cup in 2006 and finished for the Stormers in 2025.
He shed a tear and so to did his teammates.
‘One more season Brokkie,’ was the call, but even Brok Harris, the Chuck Norris of props, knew when that one more year would be a meme and not a memory.
Brok called time on his career this week. His teammates produced a tribute on the official DHL Stormers platforms.
The Stormers players and coaches pay tribute to Brok Harris.
It was powerful because they spoke about the man, the father figure, the teammate, the inspiration, the husband, the mentor, and the guy who has always been a consistent.
I don’t have those insights, so my reflection is just in numbers and the power of the universe that determined the only other club that has ever enjoyed the pleasures of Brok Harris, Newport’s Dragons, would be in town to honour him this week.
And, given the way the universe works when the intent is from the heart, Brok was spared the obvious in giving a team he represented 133 times a beating.
Brok, a loose3head and tightened of equal presence, gets to drink unconditionally in the change rooms of the Stormers and Dragons on Saturday night. How bloody cool.
Ali Vermaak, one of his propping mates, called him the ultimate swinger of the front row, a player who could do the job as a loosehead and a tighthead, as a starter and as a finisher.
For me, my only go-to, are the numbers. How spectacular.
Here they are: Thank you: Itsrugby.co.uk for your outstanding breakdown of minutes, matches and of a player’s statistical career.
Salute.
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