From Siberia to rural France, Cheetahs, Pumas prove bargain buys found everywhere

Friedle Olivier's short biography on Le Cap Sport's website - his representatives - ends with "[he's] a hidden gem".

To the fickle, cynical, and even sanctimonious South African rugby community, that phrase would've led to nothing more than scepticism a year ago, perhaps even ridicule.

Had the perennially unlucky Cheetahs fallen on such hard times in terms of recruitment that they had to pluck an obscure 30-year-old loose forward from Krasnoyarsk in Siberia, 4 200km away from Moscow?