Dutch international Alex Barendregt enjoying playing in Wellington

Each year there's a group of international players in Wellington club rugby adding flavour and personality to the competition. One player is Dutch front rower Alex Barendregt, who is now in his second season playing for Old Boys University.

As his nickname suggests, "Dutchie" has recently been in Europe playing a series of internationals for the Netherlands.

"I was previously involved in the Dutch set-up for a couple of years and they invited me back this year to play for them in three Test matches, one against Poland, one against the Ukraine and one against Sweden."

The beat Poland convincingly, but the other two matches were close.

"The Ukrainians all play in the Russian league, they weren't very skilful but they were tough. We scored an unconverted try with two minutes remaining to get to 22-22, but we couldn't control the kick-off and turned it over and they kicked a dropped goal to win with the last play.

"We played well against Sweden and took a 22-6 lead, but then they came back to lead 23-22. With two minutes to play we drove from a lineout and set up a dropped goal for our fullback which gave us a 25-23 win."

The Netherlands play in the 1B European Nations Cup, which is the third tier of European rugby after the six nations and the next group which includes countries that have appeared at Rugby World Cups such as Georgia, Russia, Portugal and Romania.

Alex said the recent internationals were well supported. "The first two of these recent internationals were played in Amsterdam and the third was in Sweden. There were about 3,000 at our first game and 3,500 at our second one - it was a hot, sunny day and some extra of people came out and watched us."

He's played 10 internationals for the Netherlands, filling all three positions in the front row of the scrum, making his debut at hooker in 2012 against Germany.

Before coming to New Zealand at the start of 2015 and settling at the Old Boys University club he played for the Haagsche Rugby Club in the Hague. Rugby has a core following in the Netherlands and he compared the strength of Dutch rugby clubs to Hardham Cup level in Wellington.

"The problem though is the depth of teams. The First XVs are okay but as soon as people get injured and replacements come in then the standard drops away."

There's plenty of New Zealanders playing in the Netherlands and in Europe. "In the Netherlands every team has two or three Kiwis, one team has about six. We played against a German side two years ago that had 14 New Zealanders."

This is in part how Alex came to New Zealand.

"Before I came to New Zealand at the start of last season I had spent a year off with a n ACL knee injury.

"Back in the Netherlands I played with a few kiwi friends and as soon as I injured my knee and had finished my Masters I thought I could do one big trip before I start working. I started training with my friends [including last year's Premier flanker Huey van Vliet] at OBU and I joined them for the season. I'm still here because I love it here!"

Since joining the Goats at the start of last year, Alex has started 15 Premier matches and came off the bench in the second half in last year's 30-27 Jubilee Cup final win over Marist St Pat's.

He also joined the fray off the bench on Saturday as the Goats lost for the first time round one of last year's Jubilee Cup.

"We let ourselves down on Saturday. We had our chances but we were off our game and Poneke played well and deserved to beat us."

"The younger guys especially were really disappointed afterwards, so hopefully we can bounce back."

"The funny thing for me was when I joined OBU last year I thought we had a really amazing and talented team but we kept losing 50/50 games. Especially the game against Wainuiomata, we played better than them but just couldn't get on top of them."

Wainuiomata won 24-22 that day in the last round of last year's Swindale Shield match, which was OBU's last loss before missing out to Poneke on Saturday.

"As soon as we started the Jubilee Cup last year everything started to gel and it took off from there."

Off the field Alex works as a commercial lawyer for a mortgage and insurance company in central Wellington, on the field he hopes to help OBU win the Swindale Shield in a fortnight and go on and defend the Jubilee Cup.