Munster's South African-born prop tells GERRY THORNLEYhe has no desire to leave the province but recognises he may well have no say in the matter
Like many gnarled veterans of the frontrow, BJ Botha had some sympathy for Tom Court and the Irish scrum in Twickenham a fortnight ago, and not just because Court was a former team-mate at Ulster. Botha didn’t need another tough outing against Soane Tonga’uiha and the Northampton scrum last January to remind him that it takes years to cut your teeth and there will always be, as he puts it, “backward steps”. BJ has been there and bought the T-shirt too.
“In the early days for sure. When I was a youngster, Jeepers! I learned the hard way, definitely,” he recalls with a rueful smile. One of his earliest Super rugby matches for the Sharks was as a 21-year-old in 2001 against the Otago Highlanders, featuring Carl Hoeft, Anton Oliver and Kees Meeuws – a trio who played together for the New Zealand under-18s all the way through Otago and the Highlanders and, being six years older, had long established themselves with the All Blacks.
“The Highlanders was a very tough set up and I was 21, so it was tough. Anton Oliver, Kees Meeuws and Carl Hoeft, all these big players and tough guys, and in Dunedin. It (Carisbrook) was the House of Pain, as they say,” he notes wryly, for that was particularly apt for him that day.
“It wasn’t every scrum but the thing is you don’t have to go backwards to feel pressure and feel like you are going to pass out, you know? There’s many times you kind of lose your eyesight actually, because of the pressure, and you get it back. You don’t have to go backwards but because of the pressure it feels like your hands are going to explode. But those things you learn and you find a way out of that so you can survive. Then it’s working past that survival where you almost now become a leader and obviously set your way forward.”
To have such resolve, it perhaps helps if you’re a thick-skinned Afikanner, built like a springbok and was born into the game. His father James played at schools level, as did his three brothers, Seán, Darren (an architect) and the youngest, 21-year-old Welsey, who is cutting his teeth as, remarkably, a outhalf cum centre.
“He’s tall and lanky. I don’t know where he comes from; he’s the postman’s boy so! We don’t know where he comes from. So from that point of view we have a rugby culture as well as the culture in South Africa. It’s something to be passionate about and like many families, mine are watching myself or watching big games together you know, wherever that might be.”
His father worked in companies such as Canon while his mother, Mignon, is a physiotherapist. Botha grew up in a suburb on the outskirts of Durban called Hilchrest, before they moved to Bloemfontein and back to Durban. He describes his upbringing as comfortable. “Both my parents were working, so it was good definitely. Yeah for sure, I love South Africa. It’s one of those things. It’s always called home, but we’ll see what happens.”
He began playing at the famed rugby-playing school of Grey College while living in Bloemfontein, though only in primary, before the family returned to Durban and he attended Kloof High School and Durban High School.
Botha was good enough to play provincial schools rugby before making the South African under-20 and under-21 teams, and then the Sharks. For the most part, save for being temporarily converted by the South African under-21 coaches into a hooker, he’s always been a prop and a tighthead at that. “I’ve always enjoyed it. I like the contact and I like if it gets technical. I like being between two heads, taking responsibility.”
He describes his breakthrough years as 2005 and ’06, when winning the first of his 26 caps for the Springboks against the All Blacks in Loftus Versfield in Pretoria. “We got a hiding (45-26), but then we beat them the following weekend in Rustenburg when they were going for the record; 17 wins in a row.”
That defeat stopped the All Blacks’ 15-match winning run.
Rugby had turned professional in 1994, just as a then 14-year-old Botha was starting out in secondary school. Like so many of his young countrymen, the dream of one day playing for the Springboks was fostered by South Africa hosting the 1995 World Cup and Francois Pienaar accepting the Webb Ellis Trophy from Nelson Mandela on that iconic day in Ellis Park. “That World Cup created a lot of the culture that subsequently came through. Everybody really wanted to be lifting the cup and that really struck me. I wanted to be there and from then I really wanted to make it. It became my dream to play professional rugby.”
There are so many coaches who have helped him along the way he makes it a habit not to mention any of them given the certainty he will omit others, but his parents were always especially supportive and all his family were in Loftus Versfield for his debut.
By 2008 he had won 25 caps, which made the decision to uproot and move to Ulster all the harder, as it came with a clear risk of his ending his Springboks’ career. “It was for sure, a very difficult decision at that stage,” he reflects, but he had been hit by injuries and then confined to four appearances (three off the bench) in the pool stages of the 2007 World Cup which South Africa won. He played subsequent games away to Wales and at home to Italy and France before Ulster identified him as the rock around which to build their scrum.
“I had been at the Sharks for seven years and it was something I needed. My wife was pregnant with our first child and it was an opportunity for us. I thought it was the right timing and I really backed myself then. I thought if I play well enough I’d be able to be selected for the Springboks’ end of season tour. But I didn’t want to wait and see if I was going to be selected. I said ‘well I’ll take this opportunity and frig it, if I get selected, brilliant. otherwise I’m going to give everything I can to Ulster’.”
His wife Taryn duly gave birth to Ava (three) and Owen, and Botha makes no apologies for maximising his earning potential to look after his young family.
“Yeah, you have to make the most of that part but I’ve always said to myself you can’t really chase the money. Your profile will take care of that and you need to play at the top flight. Obviously financial was one part but I was also very motivated to play in Europe, testing myself against big frontrows every weekend.”
Botha loves the variety of the challenges. “It doesn’t matter if you’re playing against Italian, French or Scottish packs, they’ve got Georgians, they’ve got friggin’ Russians, they’ve got all these big players, and you have to really test yourself against them. I played Super Rugby and it’s a different game, not as forwards orientated and this is what I wanted and to play in the Heineken Cup and the League.”
Next week he will come up against Ulster for the first time, when he will be a marked man, but he has no regrets about his three years there even if he concedes, a little surprisingly, he found his first season fairly taxing.
“We were a developing side. A lot of players were leaving. Coaches left. Coaches were coming in and then I think we got our rewards in my second and third year there. We made great progress, and if I think back, could we have got any higher, sooner? I think it’s tough because we had a team that needed to develop and add depth, and in the third year everything came together. Now in the fourth year they’ve had quarter-finals, back to back, which shows their side is consistent and very dangerous.”
For his three seasons with Ulster he had a fairly close-up view of Munster. “Obviously they had been a very prestigious club and they set the tone winning their two Heineken Cups, which kind of spurred everyone else on. They’ve really built a winning culture, performing on the big stage and with a good run of players playing for Ireland for a long time, and I just wanted to do something fresh, something new. That really attracted them to me.”
He’s been what they expected and, in a way, more. Significantly his wife and kids are just as happy in their new environs as they were in Ulster, and as well as being lauded by team-mates and coaches for the positive energy and scrum expertise he has brought, Botha himself has been refreshed by a new culture.
By contrast to Ulster, he went to Munster set-up which had scaled Europe’s highest mountain in 2006 and ’08, but is, he admits, going through something of a injury-affected transition which, he says, has been “managed brilliantly”. “I don’t think the supporters were very hopeful and before we even started we had our critics saying Munster are in transition and were not giving us a chance. We finished with maximum points in our pool and we’re a team that is going to be moving forward.”
Nor does he see this as the end of the road for his Springbok dreams. Necessity being the mother of invention, Pieter de Villiers softened the unofficial policy of only picking players based in South Africa, and Botha himself won a 26th cap in 2010 against Australia in Brisbane. “I’ve always had the mindset I would still like to play some international rugby and this is a platform you can really perform on.”
Still only 32, and with another year left on his contract, ideally he’d like to stay on in Munster, but knows that depends on forces outside his control, such as restrictions on overseas players. “We’ll have to see now, especially with this big decision. It’s not a big decision for me because I think the decision will be made for me anyway,” he notes. “But for me I don’t see myself leaving Munster if I’m wanted here . . . but if the decision is made for me I still want to play at the highest level and we’ll see what arrives then. But for the interim I think the focus is on the next game and the weekend and obviously the games to come. They’re massive games. Everyone’s excited about them and I can’t wait really.”
