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WHEN the Waratahs first spoke to second-rower Hendrik Roodt about the possibility of playing for NSW, one of the first things they asked was how he would feel about facing former Bulls teammates Bakkies Botha and Victor Matfield in Pretoria; his response: “I is happy to play in Australia”.

No, only a bad joke, he actually said: ”I am big, too’,” Waratahs coach Chris Hickey recalled yesterday as the former Emerging Springboks representative trained with his new teammates at Victoria Barracks.

Five months since those talks led to him signing a two-year deal – and after having been in Australia training with the Waratahs for three weeks – the ”big” boy’s self-assuredness is intact. When the prospect was raised of taking on the two formidable Springboks locks, Roodt, 22, said: ”It [would be] quite strange because they are like my role models. I look up to them. [But] they are also just flesh and bones like me. They have much more experience, but then, you have to start to learn somewhere. I would be privileged to play them.”

If Roodt, 200cm tall and whose weight has dropped from 142kg in June to 126kg, does play against the two Bulls locks, he will have more than his strength and size to fall back on, as Afrikaans is his native language and he, unlike his new Waratahs teammates, will understand what they are saying to each other on the paddock. But he also realises there will be a downside to his South African heritage when the Waratahs play the Super 14 champions in round three, with the Pretoria crowd likely to turn on him on his return. ”I don’t think they will give me that hard a time but I have gone to another country, to another team, so you can expect anything,” he said.

Roodt’s move to Australia was the last thing on his mind this time last year. As was rugby. Despite representing the Emerging Springboks in early 2008, Roodt felt his opportunities at the Bulls were limited due to the mortgage Matfield and Botha had on the second-row slots. ”I thought it was a closed door,” he said. ”I played a lot of rugby in the Vodacom Cup [South Africa’s third-tier competition], and I still enjoyed my rugby, but I thought, ‘What am I going to do after my rugby’? So I started working.” Roodt worked as a draftsman in Johannesburg and even stopped watching the game. But the temptation proved too great and he succumbed on June 23, watching the Emerging Springboks draw with the touring British and Irish Lions 13-13 at Newlands in Cape Town.

”That triggered me. I [knew I] could have been there,” he said. ”That was the burning flame.” A few weeks later, Roodt’s phone rang. It was his manager asking if he was keen to play again. ”I said, ‘Yes. Where’? And he said, ‘At the Waratahs’. I couldn’t believe it. I said, ‘Yes, do it’.

We started from there.” Once a deal was brokered, NSW physical performance manager Peter McDonald went to South Africa and put Roodt through a conditioning program. ”My weight when they called me was 142kg,” Roodt said. ”I came down to 130 and I am now at 126, just a few kilos to go – 121kg is my optimum weight to play at.”

Roodt has never met Dan Vickerman or Clyde Rathbone, two former South Africans who came to play in and represent Australia. But like them he hopes to play for the Wallabies, saying: ”If I get the opportunity I would love to.”