Having joined Ulster a decade ago, Louis Ludik now runs Hellbent and coaches Instonians.
IT’S A sunny Wednesday in May 2014 in Agen, a town in the southwest of France in between Bordeaux and Toulouse.
There’s urgency because Ulster had nearly wrapped up a deal to sign Scottish fullback Stuart Hogg only for that to fall through at the last second. They need someone else in the back three and Ludik is a good fit. But it was hard to resist Ulster’s offer. Pienaar, who had joined in 2010, sang the province’s praises every time he was back in South Africa. The Ludiks would also be moving to an English-speaking country after the difficulty of getting to grips with French.
He played for Ulster 112 times on the wing and at fullback before retiring in 2021 and remains involved in rugby as the attack and backs coach for Instonians RFC, who were Division 2B champions in the All-Ireland League this season.“We’ve been here for 10 years now, so it feels like home,” says Ludik.
He loved his time with the Irish province, even if they didn’t win a trophy in his seven years there. He had to negotiate injury niggles like most players but he was a consistent performer for Ulster out wide despite strong competition for back three places. “I knew it was going to be quite difficult,” says Ludik. “I only qualified when I was nearly 30 so it was quite late.
“We decided we wanted to stay and make Belfast our home. We sold property in South Africa and moved our money here. Keen to make it a South African braai, van der Merwe went to his local butchers and bought some high-quality Irish beef to make his own boerewors, a popular South African spiral sausage made with spices.
Ulster had released van der Merwe in late 2018 and he went home to South Africa to win the 2019 Currie Cup with the Cheetahs, but he was soon needed back in Ireland. Having started out selling their products to small artisanal stores in Belfast, Hellbent soon had success with competitions for new food businesses in Aldi and Lidl. Once the products hit the shelves, the demand blew Ludik away and it hasn’t let up since.
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