YOU wouldn’t miss him from a crowd – standing as he naturally does, at 2.04m tall and weighing 119kg.
He is the “Goodwood boykie” about whom a fellow Springbok observed that, “kids of all colours and backgrounds idolize him” (including the young boy from Mpumalanga Province who renamed him “Elizabedi” when he beheld him scoring a try during a quarterfinal game of the 2023 IRB World Cup).
Inter alia, his accolades extend to being: South African senior men’s rugby team’s most capped player with 138 appearances (and counting, at the moment of the publication of this review); both a back-to-back World Champion and SA Rugby Player of the Year Award recipient (2022 – 2023); and the youngest South African player in history, at 24 years, to play his 50th test (in 2016).
Recently on October 4, just before the Springboks’ Rugby Championship game against Argentina, fellow World Cup winning sporting idol – and a man he hailed as “the reason I started watching soccer” – Thierry Henry, hosted him and career-long buddy Siya Kolisi, at a dinner at his London home.
Such sportsman-to-sportsman acknowledgement is an extension of other appreciations of his achievements manifested in the form of being made a brand ambassador who has at any given time had endorsements with brands across categories (i.e. Adidas, Berocca, Nescafé, Switch, Thirsti, Engen, LekkeSlaap,
Plascon Micatex) in sports and lifestyle – and being featured on nationwide billboard campaigns and numerous television commercials.
He was the wanna-be Springbok laaitie who tore out centrefold posters of Springbok players from his dad’s Huisgenoot magazines, as well as a once stumpy teenage school rugby player who progressed from being the laughing stock, in his brother’s reckoning, for his gym attempts at bicep curls – to experiencing a growth spurt which transformed him into a gangly figure who by age 25 was able to bench press 385 pounds (175 kg) and perform incline dumbbell chest presses with 175 pounds (79 kg) dumbbells.
Alternatively referred to as the “gentle giant” and “Incredible Hulk”, in his new tome Unlocked, enforcing lock forward Eben Etzebeth reveals lock, stock, and barrel his lifetime involvement in one of South Africa’s most beloved sports – from school-level to being the most-capped Springbok of all time.
Among a plethora of lived experiences, Etzebeth retrospect on his development as a player: from Goodwood Primary School in the northern suburbs of Cape Town where his rugby journey commenced with his dad as the self-appointed coach, to Tygerberg High in Parrow where he became a first-team regular and onto making it into the Western Province team (where he befriended and first played with current Springbok captain Siya Kolisi) in his matric year.
He’d progress to lift the Varsity Cup with the University of Cape Town without even being a student there – thereafter, play Super Rugby for the Stormers, be selected to the ‘Baby Boks’ and ultimately realize his Springbok debut at the age of 20, in 2012.
From then on, his dedication to the national cause would ensure that the caps stacked up as he played Tests, the Rugby Championship, a British & Irish Lions series – and onto the double triumphs in the 2019 and 2023 World Cup tournaments.
Afore those victories, Etzebeth’s lengthy sojourn with the Springboks wasn’t always a pleasant experience.
Sponsors were abandoning what they deemed to be a sinking ship, and when in 2016 the team lost 57–15 to perennial nemesis New Zealand during an eight Test losing streak in a calendar year, pundits adjudged them the worst Springbok team in history.
At some juncture, the South African Rugby Union could not even afford to fly players business class – owing to loss of millions in sponsorship money.
It would take the advent of Rassie Erasmus’ transformation experiment – which moulded players from different racial and cultural backgrounds into a united outfit that would garner back-to-back world championships – which turned the team’s fortunes around.
Etzebeth writes candidly on the topic of transformation, revealing instances of Erasmus’ managing of race dynamics within the Springbok set-up.
Musing at the sound of black kids yelling, “Elizabedi! Elizabedi!” during the ‘Boks victory tour of Khayelitsha in 2023, the player mentions that he turned to Sharks teammate Kolisi and uttered: “You know what my brother, this right here is transformation. My name being chanted in a black neighbourhood.”
He writes that it warmed his heart that they (Springboks) were making people of different backgrounds proud to be South African.
An incident which occurred in the coastal town of Langebaan in 2019 almost put paid to Etzebeth realizing the first of his couple of conquests when – on the eve of travelling to the World Cup in Japan – his world got turned upside down when a melee resulted in four men claiming to had been physically and racially abused by the player and his accomplices, and sought compensation of more than R1 million from him.
Ultimately, after a South African Human Rights Commission representative had disparaged him and erstwhile Bok coach Pieter de Villiers and some journalists had called for his axing from the Springbok squad – Etzebeth was proven innocent.
Someone renowned for valuing family, Etzebeth also lets readers in on how he wooed Anlia – his wife and mother to his two children.
A singer and actress who starred in the Afrikaans soap opera Getroud Met Rugby, she sang the national anthem on the occasion of the player earning his 100th international cap against Wales in his hometown.
In her testimony regarding him, she describes him as being goofy.
Which leaves one to wonder what, from her actor’s perspective, would she had made of a 2015 commercial for a rugby strapping company – described as “cringe worthy” and the acting “horrendous” – featuring Etzebeth being dared by then Stormers teammate Cheslin Kolbe to pull an SUV using the strapping instead of a rope purportedly to demonstrate how strong it was?
Etzebeth’s memoir abounds with anecdotes which will enthral readers.
A trade paperback, Unlocked, is published by Jonathan Ball Publishers.
Available at leading bookstores countrywide, it retails for R380.
