Etzebeth's dedication made an impossible dream come true

It was just over 10 years ago now, and while it feels like yesterday, so much water has flown under the bridge in South African rugby since then. The scene was the downstairs bar at the Beverley Hills Hotel in Umhlanga Rocks, and it was Eben Etzebeth’s first ever press call as a professional rugby player.

His schools coach Gavin Beresford recalls that Etzebeth, who plays his landmark 100th game for the Springboks against Wales in his old home city of Cape Town on Saturday, played for both the Boks and the Stormers before he wore the blue and white hoops of Western Province. As it turned out, he also had to wait for selection to the Boks before being exposed to the media, for the Stormers protected him during the one Super Rugby season it took for Etzebeth to go from first class rugby newcomer to international player.

Even though there were only two or three media people present, it was understandable that Etzebeth seemed nervous and awkward in that first press conference, which started the week to his debut against England, and also Heyneke Meyer’s first test as coach.

One thing that came through crystal clear through the nervousness was that he was deeply passionate about his rugby and had also realised a long-held dream.

Etzebeth had been part of a Stormers team that had dug deep to beat the Bulls at Loftus two nights earlier, and it was while sitting exhausted in the change-room afterwards that the news of his selection was passed on to him.

“I have to admit that a few tears went down my face when I was told I was in the squad, it was unbelievable news,” said Etzebeth, who at the time was just 20 years of age and hadn’t even played Super Rugby before the start of that 2012 season.

“Saturday was definitely the best day of my rugby life. To beat the Bulls at Loftus was awesome, a truly awesome feeling, and then afterwards to be told you have realised your dream of becoming a Springbok. Well, it was just unbelievable.”

DREAMING THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM

A lot of new Boks say things like that, but both Beresford and Etzebeth’s brother Ryen will attest to how true it was in Eben’s case.

“At a very young age Eben used to have a list of goals pinned up behind his bedroom door,” recalls Ryan.

“He was very driven and goal orientated even as a young kid. One of the goals written down behind that door was to become a Springbok rugby player. That was when he was very young. But then sometime in his high school years he added another one, that he wanted to win a World Cup with the Springboks.”

The Eben Etzebeth story (26mins)

Etzebeth has realised both ambitions now and after a 10-year international career that has seen the whole ambit of emotions from the low of a record defeat to the All Blacks to the high of the 2019 World Cup triumph, he will join an elite club of Bok centurions at the DHL Stadium on Saturday. But Beresford admits that while he always saw Etzebeth’s drive and dedication, he would never have seen that coming during most of Etzebeth’s school career.

Indeed, Beresford coached a few other future stars at Tygerberg High School, including Juarno Augustus and Justin Geduld, and he says Marvin Orie, who also had Tygerberg as his alma mater and played a few years after Etzebeth, was a better rugby player at school than Etzebeth was and looked the more likely to make it. Orie was always in the A team when he was at school, Etzebeth wasn't.

GROWTH SPURT

That though had a lot to do with Etzebeth’s physique before a sudden growth spurt in December 2006 changed his life.

“Eben was a small little kid. He played flyhalf, centre, wing and then fullback. He was never in the forwards until his last two years at school. He was very athletic though and I remember at a school athletics meeting him winning the high jump as a small, skinny kid,” says Beresford.

“He played in the B team in those early years at school. I could not use him as a lock until the beginning of Grade 11 (Standard 9). He had grown so much and so suddenly. I remember thinking to myself who is this person? The only place I could move him to was lock, he was just that big.

“What I recall about that was that none of our front row players could lift him, he was just too big, he weighed 128 kilograms, so he never jumped in the lineouts. It was only when he made the Western Province Schools team that he started being a factor in the lineouts because Frans Malherbe was in the team and Steven Kitshoff was playing off the bench and they were strong enough to lift him.”

But Etzebeth’s drive to become a professional rugby player pre-dated his growth spurt, something Ryen Etzebeth described as a hormonal explosion.

“Eben was very clever at school, but he was always very singular about his goal of wanting to play rugby for a living,” recalls Ryen.

Many of the toughest players were helped at an early age by being the youngest in a family of boys, with the weight and size given away in the rough-and-tumble games in the back-yard forcing the youngest to adapt. That may have been the case with Etzebeth too.

“I am three years older than Eben, and there are just two of us. We did spend a lot of time playing together as kids,” says Ryen.

“We lived near the Goodwood Rugby Club, and my dad played there, so we used to go every day after school to kick a ball and play. That was our life. It was every single day that we’d go across and do that. We did come from a rugby family with the rugby going through the veins. My uncle Cliffie played for WP for many years, and my father Skattie was a very good club player.”

Ryen himself played as a lock and No 8 for both Goodwood and Northerns Parow at first league level so while he says his father was a big influence on Eben, so would he have been. Like Beresford, Ryen recalls his brother being driven as a kid but more likely at that stage to make it in the backline than as a forward.

“We were both very athletic. At primary school we won five victor ludorums on the athletic day between us. Eben was very fast. He is still very fast for his size. But he was also small. It was a hormone explosion in the summer of 2006 that changed all that,” he laughs.

“Eben was always very dedicated, disciplined and committed to his goal, even when he was smaller and the dream seemed so much further away. He never allowed himself to be influenced by his friends. He would never smoke or do any of the other things naughty young kids do. And he was always one who trained a lot and trained hard.”

CAREER TAKES OFF

Beresford reckons his dedication to training accounted for his growth spurt.

“He was hooked on gym and picking up weights and he did gain incredible strength over a period of time. I think it is genetics. I knew the Etzebeth family from Western Province wrestling. All the Etzebeth’s were freaky big guys. Initially Eben wasn’t a chip off the old block but he grew into being that from a physical viewpoint.”

Former Springbok lock Hennie Bekker, then the director of youth rugby at WP, was attributed by Ryen as being one of the big influences, along with Beresford and his father, in his brother’s rise from being a mediocre schools player into a WP Craven Week player.

“I was helping the first team at Tygerberg when I spotted this really big guy running in one of the lower teams on another field,” recalls Bekker.

“I asked the guys who the big fellow was and they told me he was one of the Etzebeths, and I called him over. I told him to come to the WP Elite Squad sessions that I ran every week, but told him that he had to make a promise to me that he would be completely committed and would work hard. He made that promise. He also promised that he would stop messing around in the backs and become only a lock after that.”

Etzebeth’s rise from there was quite meteoric, and he quickly progressed to a point where he could nail down a spot in the WP Craven Week team and from there he furthered his rugby development by attending the WP Institute in Stellenbosch.

“I knew that if he worked hard he would make it big as he has all the attributes. He is very quick for his size and has great skills,” said Bekker.

AN EXAMPLE TO ALL ASPIRING STARS

Beresford says he uses Etzebeth as an example when he tries to inspire young school kids into chasing their goals in spite of whatever challenges they might consider to be blocking their path.

“Apart from not having the size, he was also not a physical player when he was smaller. That came later and was something he worked on. So I use him as an example to every kid out there. It doesn’t matter if you are in the Paarl Gym third team, you can make it if you are dedicated and believe in yourself,” said Beresford.

“It is all about the work you are willing to put in. The belief you have in yourself. Eben was never a superstar at school, but that wasn’t important to him. He remained focused. It is about what you think you can do and you can achieve. It’s not about what anyone else thinks.”

Beresford also recalls Etzebeth being “an absolute gentleman” when he was at school and he continued being unassuming and respectful after he left and first started making it as a rugby player.

“Eben phoned me on the day he was first selected to play for the Stormers. He told me he was playing as a stand-in for Rhynhardt Elstadt, who was injured. Eben told me he was going to play in that one game and then Elstadt would be back. I had to explain to him that it was the wrong kind of thinking. I told him he must play well enough to keep Elstadt out of the team and keep his place. And that was what happened.”

THE SUPER HERO ARRIVES

A memory from one of Etzebeth’s first games for the Stormers, a pre-season friendly against the Lions, was of him driving a big Lions forward several metres back in the tackle and unceremoniously dumping him onto the Newlands turf. In his first game against Boland in Wellington, he hit the rucks with huge ferocity that had people in the stands wincing.

Not that it surprised those of us media people who had seen him train with the Stormers earlier in the week. It was on a hot day in January at the Hermanus Primary School during a Stormers pre-season camp. A day earlier, Rassie Erasmus had announced his resignation as WP director of rugby, so there was more interest than usual in the Stormers. Some of that attention got deflected onto Etzebeth.

“Hey, who the hell is that monster? That one over there, the one that looks like a Super Hero?" asked one hack.

It didn't require more than a second glance to recognise the big fellow as one of the stars of the UCT Varsity Cup triumph from the year before. But, perhaps because Etzebeth was wearing a vest, or maybe because injury had prevented him from playing more than a bit part in the WP under-21 campaign in 2011, it did look at that first sighting of 2012 as though he had bulked up considerably.

“Super Hero would be a good description of him, he does have an amazingly proportioned physique,” agreed the then WP under-21 coach John Dobson.

“In fact, his biceps are something of a talking point around Eben. They're massive and when we have fines meetings we make him show them off as a party trick. He is just ridiculously strong.”

AN ACCURATE PREDICTION

He is, and he said in that very first interview as a Bok back in Umhlanga in 2012 that he enjoys being the enforcer, and sees No 4 lock as the position that is expected to fulfil that role. But he has never been the disciplinary problem that some who knew the Etzebeth reputation in WP club rugby, when the late Cliffie and brother Skattie were terrorising opponents in the 1980s, might have expected him to be.

When I did a magazine article on Etzebeth during his first year with the Stormers, the chief executive of the WP Rugby Institute, Jacques Hanker, made a very accurate prediction on how Etzebeth’s career would pan out.

“People expect Eben to be a loose cannon but that is not the case at all. When he was at the Institute we had no problems with him either on or off the field,” said Hanekom.

“He is in actual fact quite calculated on the field. He thinks about what he is doing, he has the right mixture of calculation and aggression. I don't foresee him becoming like Bakkies Botha in terms of running into disciplinary problems later on in his career.

“When he was with us he was a reserved kid, you could almost say he was quite shy, but he was extremely focused and dedicated. When a kid comes to us he has to tick certain boxes related to both performance and attitude on and off the field. Eben ticked them all. We knew we were working with the full Monty."

After 10 years during which Etzebeth has served time as a captain and has become an acknowledged and respected leadership figure in the Bok team, and during which there hasn’t been an onfield disciplinary infraction that springs readily to mind, no-one would argue now that Hanekom wasn’t spot on with that comment.

FAMILY MAN

It culminates on Saturday with a landmark achievement that Ryen says isn’t just a dream come true for Eben, but his whole family.

“Family is everything for Eben, he has always been very clear about the role his parents played in making everything possible for him and he knows everyone in the family will climb mountains for him. And he’d do the same for us,” said Ryen.

“My dad was a big role model for him and having seen his dedication when he wrote his goals down on the bedroom door as a young kid, I have shared those dreams. We will all be living it with him on Saturday, and I hope it goes well and the Boks win so it can be a really memorable occasion.”

> > > Catch Eben's 100th test match live on the SuperSport Rugby channel on DStv Premium this Saturday, 16 July, from 4pm, with kick-off at 5.05pm.