POCKET ROCKET
Kolbe shows size doesn't matter
At Newlands, they still talk about the try Cheslin Kolbe scored for Western Province against the Griquas. Receiving a kick on the touchline by his own 10-metre line, Kolbe stepped the first chaser. Then he stepped another. And another. And another. By the time he reached the posts, he had run out of defenders to beat.
There is no video footage to corroborate this claim, but John Dobson, his coach at Western Province and the Stormers, swears blind he beat 11 players. “The single most amazing thing I have seen on a rugby field,” Dobson says.
That try should have acted as his springboard to superstardom. Instead it would be another five years before he made his debut for South Africa late last year. Now after two dazzling individual performances against New Zealand and Italy, the world is discovering what those Western Province supporters knew in 2013.
So why the six-year gap? Quite simply because successive Springboks coaches considered Kolbe, at 1.70m and a shade over 76kg, too small to cut it in international rugby.
No country has – or at least had – such a fetish for size as South Africa. Rather than viewing Kolbe’s sidestep or acceleration as weapons, coaches could not look past the wing’s height as a liability in defence and under the high ball.
“I think it became clear to him under the previous coaching regime that he was not big enough to play for South Africa,” Dobson said.
Kolbe was not the first to suffer in this regard. His close friend Gio Aplon (1.75m) won just 17 caps in a three-year period, a fraction of what his talent warranted.
Another Stormer, Breyton Paulse (1.70m) had a far longer international career, but still says his height held him back. “The ingrained attitude was that bigger was better,” Paulse said. “That’s a rugby national team picking big, brute guys as their first priority.
“You would only get picked as a last resort.”
Kolbe says he honed his sidestep playing in the streets of the Cape Town suburb of Kraaifontein and running around his family home. He earned a scholarship to Brackenfell High School, but through athletics rather than rugby.
Yet with that devastating sidestep, he was always bound for rugby, and as soon as Dobson laid eyes on him in action his fate was set. “I’d never seen a sidestep like it,” Dobson said. “It was so good that in touch sessions the other side were allowed an extra player. Even then they could not stop him.”
With the door to international rugby seemingly shut, Kolbe agreed a deal to join Toulouse, the fallen French giants, in 2017.
“I remember telling him that in France they are big, strong, don’t train particularly hard and it would not suit him,” Dobson said. “He proved us wrong.”
With the Springboks employing strict rules on selecting overseas-based players, that also meant the end of his international aspirations.
If ever there was an environment for Kolbe to prove he could stand tall in the land of giants then the Top 14 was it. Soon he was topping every chart going for metres made and defenders beaten, winning the best import award by Midi Olympique, the French rugby bible, in his first season, followed by the Top 14 title in his second.
Meanwhile, back in South Africa, Rassie Erasmus had replaced the size-obsessed Allister Coetzee as Springboks coach and lifted the ban on selecting overseas players.
When an injury crisis struck during the 2018 Rugby Championship, Erasmus rang Dobson to ask his opinion of Kolbe. “He said, ‘Do you think he could play for South Africa?’” Dobson said. “I said, ‘Yes, but only at fullback where there is less manon-man and less contestable kicks’. I was wrong again.”
Every bit as impressive as the blinding blur of his footwork is the manner in which he has stood up in defence. In just his second Test against New Zealand, he scored an interception try and pulled off a trysaving tackle on Rieko Ioane in full flight. He again terrorised the All Blacks in South Africa’s opening World Cup match, racking up 118 metres and beating 11 defenders.
That was followed with a man-of-the-match performance against Italy.
His ankle is now healed for the quarterfinal against Japan in which he will come up against pocket rockets Kotaro Matsushima and Kenki Fukuoka. –
In touch sessions the other side were allowed an extra player. Even then they could not stop him