It was a first-round knee injury in 2012 that turned into back surgery that turned into bacterial meningitis and what, by rights, should have been the end of the 2004 IRB player of the year's career.

Rugby – "90 per cent" of his life up to that point – was off the table. As Burger puts it: "There was a certain stage where getting normal quality of life back was the main focus".

Like his father always says, "there's two things that don't last – opensiders that chase rucks and dogs that chase cars" and Burger was among the very best of the damned, a Springboks staple who, before his illness, had started 59 of his 68 Test appearances since his debut against Georgia at the 2003 World Cup in Sydney.

Something had to give, although no one expected the calamity to come.

When the Waratahs visited Port Elizabeth, where Burger was born, early last year, no one knew if the Stormers breakaway would recover from his mystery illness, let alone return to rugby.

By the time the Wallabies arrived in Cape Town four months later, news had broken that the man once described by former Brumbies and Springboks coach Jake White as being worth "three players" on work rate alone was plotting a comeback.

It was as celebrated as it was miraculous. "There has never been a Bok player of his stature, and there won't be ever again," SA Rugby magazine's Jon Cardinelli wrote a year ago last Wednesday.

Burger played the season in Currie Cup then rejoined the Stormers and was rewarded for his immense physical and mental effort with three Test starts in the Springboks' series against Wales and Scotland in June.

Saturday will be Burger's fourth Test appearance since the 2011 World Cup quarter-final loss against the Wallabies and the first in his beloved Cape Town since 2010.

His wife, Michele, may or may not be watching.

"I don't think she's watched many rugby games since I've been back," Burger says. "We've seen the other side of the game. When you're younger and playing every game it's good fun. But rugby's dealt me some harsh blows."

Burger – with his father's comments and his own two-year battle with injury and serious illness in mind –  marvels at a player such as the Wallabies' Michael Hooper. He was 22 and bulletproof once too, but he knows now that the salad days do not last forever.

"You go through a stage when you're nearly invincible, you take bigger knocks, you take more risks, you play better but you take higher risk without breaking," Burger says.

"And all of a sudden through injury or illness you realise you're human. The body can only take that much. So when you come back after a time like that you've got a different approach, because you've seen the other side of it."

Somehow, even his return has been tinged with controversy. Burger has spent the past two months in Japan with Suntory Sungoliath and was recalled to the Springboks to replace the injured Francois Louw.

Coach Heyneke Meyer chose to play his veteran breakaway off the bench and start relative unknown Teboho Mohoje in an interesting tactical manoeuvre, but Meyer's choice has been mired in controversy amid claims he was pressured by rugby administrators and politicians to start a black African player at any cost.

Burger spoke highly of his teammate in Cape Town this week, wishing Mohoje well in his maiden Test start, and said the 24-year-old had a "great opportunity" to stake a claim for continuing selection.

He also spoke to Fairfax Media about the wider issue of so-called "transformation" in South African rugby, a process he wholeheartedly supports, but later asked that the comments be held back from publication.

It was an extraordinary example of the extent to which rugby has been politicised in South Africa. A 71-Test veteran with 11 years of exposure to the Springboks set-up, considered among the best players in international rugby, who does not feel free to talk about the state of the sport in his own country.

Then again, Burger is very much a man with a second chance and, perhaps, little appetite to jeopardise his future playing prospects. He has been on the edge and wants to step back for a good while yet.

"At some stage in your career, you sort of take it as a given," he says.

"You're going to get selected, you're going to play the next one, you play 30, 40, 50 Test matches in a row and then you miss out and you realise you have an appetite to play some more, and they don't come as easy as they did before.

"Every time you get an opportunity now, you make the most of it."

The hunger was enough to convince Burger to turn down a lucrative offer from French rugby club Toulon and join Suntory instead, purely because the shorter Japanese season meant he could continue to press his Test claims via Super Rugby next year.

"Obviously it's a big year, a World Cup year, so hopefully I can work my way back into the national squad," he says.

"When you make the decision yourself that you want to go overseas, if it's in your hands, I think you're fine with it. But when it gets taken away by injury or illness or getting dropped, that's when there's unfinished business.

"I don't have a point to prove but I still want to go out there and show that I've got what it takes."

Michele Burger may not be able to bring herself to tune in, but no one else with the stomach to follow the king of comebacks on to the pitch at Newlands Stadium on Saturday doubts the 31-year-old still has "it" in spades.

"You run the risk of becoming stale by playing, like I did, for six or seven seasons uninterrupted," Burger says.

"You play and it becomes an obsession, it's 90 per cent of your life. Then you get married and it becomes 80 and then you have kids.

"But after I was ill I thought I wouldn't play rugby again, so now I have a second chance. I've always been relaxed but I'm more relaxed now. I still take the game as seriously as ever but I just think it's a much smaller part of my life than it used to be."