Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2022 i SA RUGBY

Malcolm Marx is set to finish up among the Springbok centurions. The 28-year-old powerhouse hooker made his 50th appearance for South Africa in the Rugby Championship opener against the AU Blacks, but with Bongi Mbonambi having hogged the Bok No 2 jersey in recent years, roughly half of Marx’s Test caps have been earned off the wood. And while he was central to the Lions’ Super Rugby surge under Johan Ackermann, in 2020 he relocated office to the less attritional climes of Japan’s Top League. By the time Marx takes over the starting job after the 2023 World Cup, he will be like a 2019 Toyota Hilux that’s only taken out of the garage on Sunday afternoons and special occasions – the odometer will defy the model year on the…

HANDRE POLLARD ‘What a privilege to share the field with you Eben Etzebeth. An amazing effort from the boys the last 3 weeks. Time to rest up and prepare for the next one.’ – The Springbok flyhalf embraced the veteran enforcer after their Test series win over Wales in July. DAMIAN WILLEMSE ‘Legend.’ – The Springbok utility back posed with former Stormers teammate Jamie Roberts after the series win over Wales in Cape Town. GRANT WILLIAMS ‘Special.’ – The Springbok scrumhalf with fellow rookies Evan Roos, Ruan Nortje, Jaden Hendrikse and Kurt-Lee Arendse, after making his Test debut in Bloemfontein. TREVOR NYAKANE ‘l’ve said it before and I will say it again, Bongi Mbonambi is top dog! Congratulations on your 50th Test my brother, many more to come. – The…

SARUGBYMAG.CO.ZA READERS CAST THEIR VOTES ROUND 1 BUTCH JAMES vs ALBERT VAN DEN BERG Van den Berg made his Test debut on 12 June 1999 in a 74-3 victory over Italy in Port Elizabeth. The lanky, fleet-footed lock was selected in the Springboks’ 1999 World Cup squad, playing in five matches during the tournament while scoring two tries against Uruguay. After a three-year absence from Test rugby, Van den Berg was recalled by Jake White in 2004, helping the Boks win the Tri-Nations that same year. He earned the last of his 51 Test caps as part of White’s 2007 World Cup-winning squad. Van den Berg also represented Griquas, the Cats, Sharks, Canon Eagles and Barbarians before his retirement in 2013. James, another member of the triumphant 2007 side, earned…

Damian Willemse is already a World Cup winner but his fifth Test start was like a new dawn. Willemse coolly slotted a 35m penalty after the hooter in Pretoria to deny Wales a historic win on South African soil and secure the Boks a winning start to the season. His left arm was heavily bandaged, a holdover from the injury suffered during the league phase of the United Rugby Championship which had ruled him out of the Stormers’ quarter-final and should have consigned him to the sidelines for a month. Rassie Erasmus and Jacques Nienaber have invested 22 Tests in flyhalf Elton Jantjies to compete with Handre Pollard since 2018, yet it was Willemse who shifted into the pocket from fullback against the Welsh at Loftus – after Jantjies was…

‘RTS’ could be read as an abbreviation for ‘ready to shine’, which would be apt in the case of All Blacks talent Roger Tuivasa-Sheck. His name takes up so much headline space it is often shortened to RTS, and the new All Black is poised for stardom in rugby union after dumping the 13-man game. The former blockbusting rugby league star has enjoyed a meteoric rise since making the switch, earning an All Blacks call-up at centre less than 12 months after switching codes and making his Test debut in the third and decisive clash of the Ireland series in New Zealand. Billed as the next Sonny Bill Williams, Tuivasa-Sheck followed SBW to become just the third man to play a Test for the All Blacks after first representing his…

SA Rugby magazine The BLitzboks thumped reigning Olympic champions Fiji 31-7 to win the men’s sevens gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. Bernard Stark Borchardt By far the best coached and most organised team in the tournament. One trusts that Powell can bring the same vision, meticulous planning, motivation, direction, application and total discipline to the Sharks. Wayne Lardner What a hammering. Fantastic how focused they stayed throughout the tournament. Willie van Zyl Love it. Puts eggs on the faces of those commentators who earlier referred to the Fiji-New Zealand semi-final as ‘worthy of being the gold medal match’. Plonkers. Jonathan Galbraith Selvyn Davids was the player of the tournament for me. He conjured up a good few of our tries, attacked the line at pace and caused…

How much will Neil Powell be missed as head coach of the Blitzboks? Coach Neil is a genius. Not a lot of people get to see him behind the scenes so it’s going to be a big loss. Being who he is, he’s left a great foundation for whoever is going to step into that role. He’s helped me grow as a person and been a positive influence. His faith has also had an impact on him. And his influence on your development? When I came into the system, my skills weren’t as great as I thought and being the analytical coach that he is, he picked up that I could do better. He’s a strong believer in work ethic and that energy has rubbed off on to me. Coach…

Eight years ago, the Blitzboks prevailed in a thrilling final against New Zealand to claim their first gold medal in Glasgow. In July, a far more youthful Blitzboks squad was utterly dominant in an impressive gold medal match against Olympic champions Fiji. Coach Neil Powell had some of the greatest players in sevens rugby history to rely on in 2014. Chris Dry, Frankie Horne, captain Kyle Brown, Kwagga Smith and Warren Whiteley powered the engine room, while Cecil Afrika, Branco du Preez, Justin Geduld, Comal Hendricks, Werner Kok and Seabelo Senatla were among the deceptive backs. This time, Powell opted for a different approach. An expanded preparation squad had returning sevens players in Ruhan Nel, Kurt-Lee Arendse and Senatla – who had all been playing fifteens for the Stormers and…

Which team is the greatest in the history of Super Rugby? Was it the 2009 Bulls powered by Victor Matfield and Fourie du Preez, the all-star Stormers side that contested the 2010 final, the Sharks outfit that coasted into the 2007 decider or the 2017 Lions who tripped at the final hurdle? Or how about Joeli Vidiri’s Auckland Blues of the mid-1990s, Sam Whitelock’s 2018 Crusaders or the masterful 2011 Reds steered by halfbacks Will Genia and Quade Cooper? The envy of northern hemsiphere rugby for the better part of two decades after the game turned professional, Super Rugby produced most of the talent that went on to win a World Cup between 1996 and 2019. SARugbymag.co.za readers have tackled the opportunity to participate in a unique 32-team knockout tournament…

Rassie Erasmus’ most famed rugby moment is leading the Springboks’ revival from being ranked seventh in the world in 2018 to winning the World Cup in Japan 18 months later. Erasmus has the Midas touch but his legacy in South African rugby is greater than a World Cup triumph and that of an outstanding Springbok player. Erasmus, in his first stint as South Africa’s national director of rugby, appointed Neil Powell to head up the country’s sevens programme and gave him the head coach responsibilities in 2013. A year later, Powell guided the Blitzboks to a stunning Commonwealth Games gold as New Zealand lost the final for the first time at the event. POWELL IS A TRUE AMBASSADOR OF EVERYTHING THAT IS GOOD ABOUT SOUTH AFRICAN RUGBY AND SOUTH AFRICA…

It would be tough to dispute the notion that Malcolm Marx is currently the best hooker in the world, but it is an interesting situation – and rather fortunate for South African rugby – that the best hooker had worn the number 16 on his back for 24 of his first 50 Tests. It feels lazy to argue against the claim by looking purely at game time or at whether he starts or not. Rugby in the professional era is a 23-man game, and the Springboks are among a select few international sides with the quality of depth and tactical nous to approach Tests with a game plan structured around a full squad and not just a starting XV. Gone are the days when a player would have to be…

Biological men must not be allowed to play women’s rugby. This should go without saying, yet has been the subject of furious debate, particularly in England where the RFU Council recently voted to ban trans women from full-contact women’s rugby at all levels. This followed a two-year review that considered all available scientific evidence and included a survey which received over 11 000 responses. ‘The review and consultation concluded that detailed peer-reviewed research provides evidence that there are physical differences between those people whose sex originally recorded as male and those as female at birth, and advantages in strength, stamina and physique brought about by testosterone and male puberty are significant and retained even after testosterone suppression,’ explained the RFU, which has now fallen in line with World Rugby’s trans…

Supplied by DEFENCE ACTIVITIES My three go-to warm-ops When asked what my three go-to U12s warm-ups are, I have no hesitation in listing them, says Dan Brockhurst, owner of DB Sports Coaching. 1 REVERSE ‘IT’ Play this with three or more people. ‘It’ makes the list because it is easy to explain; everyone has played it before; everyone enjoys it, even the seniors, and it involves everyone. SET-UP Play in any shape you want or even without designating a shape – just play where you are. Give one player a ball. He/she is ‘it’, or the ‘target’ in this game. Start with that player throwing the ball away. This can be to a player or into space. Now, the other players must collect the ball and catch the target by…