Last Friday and Saturday proved to be underwhelming, at best, for English clubs in the European cup competitions; the only comfort being that this is just the start of their campaigns, with some time to recover. However, sometimes sport is put into perspective and that happened with the untimely passing of the South African lock Hyron Andrews.

At the age of just 31, Andrews died the day before his Johannesburg Lions team were due to play La Rochelle in the opening round of the Champions Cup.

Memories of Andrews will now rest alongside those of players such as Jerry Collins and Sione Lauaki, who died too young. For those linked with Harlequins, the passing of Nick Duncombe in 2003 will come to mind.

The news of Andrews shocked not just the whole Lions entourage but the wider rugby community. This included those who knew him from his time with Sale Sharks, where he signed on a short-term loan in February 2024, staying until the end of the 2024-25 season. He and his family became popular figures in the Sale rugby community.

Immediately following Andrews’ death, the Lions confirmed that the game would go ahead in his honour, and you might think that this was the only decision that could or should have been made. Would all his colleagues not want to play for his memory? The answer is probably yes, and the collective nature of rugby would encourage this. What should not be underestimated is the strength needed to compete against the background of tragedy and complexities this thereby created.

When I heard this news, it immediately took me to a memory of sitting in St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington with my Harlequins team-mate Richard Langhorn before he was pronounced dead after suffering a heart attack during a routine back operation. We didn’t have to play another club game until three weeks later, when we had an emotionally charged encounter with Saracens in the Pilkington Cup.

The memories of Langers and his wonderfully dry and irreverent Aussie sense of humour were still painfully present. I cannot conceive what it must have been like for the Lions players to have to perform the day following Andrews’ death.

Grief is an intensely personal experience and, as the TV coverage panned around the reactions of both the Lions and Sharks teams, the upset was evident. I would guess that each player had his own, widely different, thoughts – some on Andrews as a player; some on the last moment they had with him, and others may have had oddly tangential recollections.

It would also have been difficult for the Lions coaching team to pitch the approach to players before the game. There would have been a delicate balance to be struck between wanting to tap into the emotion of the occasion, honouring it and yet not allowing non-game-related thoughts to intrude. You can influence the changing-room atmosphere. You cannot have similar control during the minute’s silence that immediately precedes the kick-off.

Some rugby watchers will have noted the comment made by Alex Sanderson, the Sale director of rugby, who added his tribute to Andrews and mentioned his support for the members of his family. Sanderson is far more than the bluff northerner he likes to portray. He is an insightful and empathetic, if sometimes irascible, man. This was demonstrated when he told the BBC that Sale refused to use or weaponise the death as a motivational tool for their own Champions Cup match. This might appear starkly at odds with the statements made by the Lions, but I believe it showed an alternative way of approaching this point, given that there is no indisputably correct approach to grief.

By using this different focus, Sanderson is using a tactic espoused by sports psychologists of controlling the controllables. It allows more individuality in players’ responses to grief, while making purely rugby-related information the centre of attention. In the long run, as Sanderson added, his squad have to get through this in their own time and in their own way. What he also avoided was the possibility that anything but a victory could be viewed in some way as betraying Andrews’ memory.

We must all deal with the death of people close to us. What we do not all have to do is thereafter publicly take part in a contest that will have a definitive winner and loser, and knowing that this contest will be in front of paying spectators and TV viewers, as well as grieving members of the departed person’s closest family and friends. In that way sport is different, and I want to acknowledge the way in which all concerned tried to make the best of this circumstance. I also hope that everyone in the Lions organisation can quickly come to terms with their loss.