Thembelani is kicking down doors and doing things his way

BULLS FLANK Thembelani Bholi may be a man of few words but when he does speak, he never minces his words and can back them up.

And that is what his Bulls teammates discovered during the offseason as they battled it out for places in the team and are now glad to allow Bholi to do his talking on the field in Super Rugby.

“I have to kick the door down, there is no one who is going to fight for me, I need to fight for myself,” Bholi said from Loftus Versfeld.

It has been on the field that Bholi has probably screamed the loudest of any Bulls player and his starting debut in last weekend’s win against the Hurricanes came as no surprise to those who have watched him quietly go about his job in the preseason.

“Each and every team from New Zealand is strong and hard to play against. But we pitched up on the day and we showed them what we can do,” said Bholi who grew up in a village called Mooiplaas on the outskirts of East London in the Eastern Cape.

And while there has been plenty of noise about the antics of young Lions wing Aphiwe Dyantyi since the beginning of the season, Bholi is relishing Saturday’s derby against the Lions who have not lost a Super Rugby match against a South African teams in the last two years.

As direct and physical as he is on the field, Bholi, carelessly but without malice, rightfully lacks the diplomacy too many players afford their adversaries when none should be in a battle for supremacy and ultimately victory.

The Bulls will need Bholi’s brazenness and a lack of fear in the face of danger if they are to gain some parity against the Lions onslaught.

To win the battle to get physical and setpiece dominance the Bulls will again look to their tight five and the likes of Bholi but they will also need to employ some of the dynamic innovation to their game that saw them outsmart and outlast the Hurricanes.

Bholi thinks they are a team ready to face any challenge thrown at them.

“We know that the Lions will come hard at us and want to prove a point but we are ready for everything they will throw at us and every challenge. We are taking things one step at a time. Every team that comes, we will accept the challenge and do what we need to do,” said Bholi.

Bholi’s journey to Super Rugby and the most successful South African franchise in the competition mirrors the road less travelled by most players in the country.

It is that journey that began playing Sunday league village rugby against his uncles and father that saw Bholi make his way to the Southern Kings then the Pumas before coming to Loftus.

As enjoyable as this moment is for Bholi, the man of few words but big hits and runs on the field also dreams of walking the green and gold paved road to becoming a Springbok but not before he adds his name to the many greats that have made Loftus their home.

“I’m really enjoying myself a lot. I was with the Pumas in Mpumalanga and it is closer. But it is better to be here than in Nelspruit. The Kings helped me a lot because that is where I started my career. That experience made me strong enough to face any challenge that I am going to face at the Bulls.”

“For now I want to play most of the Super Rugby games and then I will see how that goes. All I want to do now is to start in Super Rugby and be a better player and improve on what I already have,” Bholi said. GRANT GRIFFITH, the director of rugby at Dale College in the Eastern Cape, laughs when it is suggested he made a mistake by not picking Aphiwe Dyantyi for the first team in his matric year.

“It’s funny how I’m now hearing stories that I never selected him because he was too small at school,” says Griffith with a hearty chuckle. “He was certainly smaller than the guys around him, but that’s because he was a year younger than all of them … he was always a year young for his group. And, besides that, we had a great flyhalf who played first team for two years running. Aphiwe didn’t make (the) first team in matric because there was a better player ahead of him in the queue, that’s all.”

Dyantyi might not have cracked it at schoolboy level – he actually ended up playing for the third team in his matric year in 2011 – but he’s making a name for himself now, at the Lions – on the wing. The 23-year-old has been man of the match in both the Lions Super Rugby games so far this season, grabbing a brace of tries in both outings, against the Sharks and Jaguares.

“He’s got a massive future ahead of him,” says Griffith. “He’s got everything to take the big step up that’s required to succeed at the highest level, and that’s discipline, hard work and dedication.

“I’m thrilled for him. It just shows that even if you don’t crack it at school level, if you want something and you’re prepared to work for it, you can achieve your goal. Aphiwe is the perfect example of grabbing your chance when it comes.”

It helped that Dyantyi, “opened his mind”, in his own words, to the idea of changing positions. He was, at school and even afterwards, intent on playing flyhalf only, and at a push fullback, but a meeting with University of Johannesburg Under-19 coach Mac Masina some years back convinced him to swap to the wing, and consider other positions.

“Mac was coaching the UJ Young Guns and I was just playing touch rugby for Wits at the time. He offered me a chance to play for UJ, but I told him I didn’t like wing. I’ve never liked wing because it’s not where you can make the decisions, like at flyhalf,” Dyantyi recently told Grit Sports in an interview.

“But I got together with Mac, we had some coffee, and at the end of the meeting I signed up for UJ. I played fullback, I played Sevens, I played Young Guns… and then I decided to give wing a shot. I’ve learned to open up the mind to other options.”

The rest is history. Dyantyi starred for UJ in the Varsity Cup, at centre mainly, and debuted for the Lions in the Currie Cup last year. He is now starring on the wing in Super Rugby and after last weekend’s showing against the Jaguares his coach Swys de Bruin said he could become a legend of the game. Big things lie ahead for the speedy wing with the big side-step and jet-fuelled pace, but so disappointed was he at missing out on first team action at school he gave up the game for some time.

He moved to Johannesburg and started studying, having enrolled for a B Com Marketing degree (which he now has an honours in), “to make a fresh start”. He turned to soccer and social rugby, helping out his (residence) from time to time, before being convinced by former Lions centre Masina to change his thinking and give rugby a go again, even it if meant playing wing.

“My family always said I was destined to play Super Rugby and for the Springboks,” he told Grit Sports. “Now I am playing in Super Rugby and am fully focused on that, to make the most of the opportunity I have. Of course I want to play Test rugby, but one shouldn’t look too far ahead otherwise you can miss out on the now.”