The flags at the Stormers training ground in Bellville flew at half-mast on Monday as a sign of respect to Jantjies, whose father, Thomas, 46, a warrant officer in the army, died in 1 Military Hospital in Pretoria on Saturday after complications from a bee sting.

‘It’s really sad, a real tragedy for the Jantjies family and we want to support Elton in whatever way we can,’ Stormers coach Allister Coetzee said on Monday. ‘He has returned to Johannesburg and he must take as much time as he needs to deal with the tragedy. There will not be any pressure on him to return to action. He definitely won’t play in the two warm-up matches and we’ll take it from there.

‘We have Gary van Aswegen coming back into training after recovering from injury and we have also had Kurt Coleman training hard with us. Then there is Louis Schreuder, who although a scrumhalf looked quite good when tried at flyhalf last season, as well as Dewaldt Duvenage, another scrumhalf who can also play flyhalf.’

The Stormers, of course, also have stalwart Peter Grant available to them, but his arrival back in the Cape is dependent on when his Japanese club is knocked out of their competition, with Coetzee stating that it could be any time between 5 February and 25 February.

As such, the traditional pre-season friendly between the Boland Kavaliers and the Stormers will be played at the Cape Town Stadium on Saturday, 9 February – a move that will no doubt be welcomed by passionate Cape Town rugby fans.

The City and the WP Rugby Football Union have been at loggerheads over the past few years, with the City wanting the union to move to the luxurious stadium in Green Point given the financial burden it has become due to high maintenance costs.

The WPRFU, in turn, argues that it is not its problem, and that it would be too expensive to move from its traditional base in Newlands, which it owns, to the Cape Town Stadium, where it would have to rent.

The Stormers website lists the following pre-season fixtures:

2 February: vs Cheetahs (in Bloemfontein)
9 February: vs Boland Kavaliers (in Wellington)

But the City of Cape Town has secured an arrangement with the Boland Rugby Union to host the game at the Cape Town Stadium.

Both Boland and Western Province will get an opportunity to further test their team’s depth for the Vodacom Cup season, with a curtain raiser scheduled before the main event between a Boland Invitational XV and the Western Province Vodacom Cup side.

With the inaugural Community Cup due to start on 16 February, perhaps it would have made more sense to have seen Boland’s representative in that tournament, Villagers Worcester, take on either SK Walmers or Durbanville-Bellville, the two sides representing WP, in the curtain raiser.