Drugs banas player, nightclub fracas as coach, but Johan is perfect for Gloucester
‘I lost the house because I couldn’t afford it on a police salary’
JOHAN ACKERMANN has lifted the gloom that has lingered long over Castle Grim. The nickname for Kingsholm, Gloucester’s oncegreat fortress, has fitted all too well for four years.
Since finishing fifth in the Premiership in 2013 the Cherry and Whites have only not finished ninth once — and that was when they were eighth in 2016.
So this club, who never left the top six between 2002 and 2008, were crying out for a revival. Win at Wasps today and Gloucester will spend Christmas second in the table, nestled behind champions Exeter.
That clamber back towards rugby union’s peak has been led by a man who has endured a similar expedition before.
Ackermann, an ex-Springbok lock, took the Lions of South Africa’s Highveld to within touching distance of the Super Rugby summit in Johannesburg.
Hired in 2013, after the Lions were relegated, Ackermann inspired a change in style, and fortunes. He had them roaring soon enough, taking a team with no Test players from the bottom of the pile to two consecutive Super Rugby finals in his last two years — breaking up the dominance of New Zealand’s sides in the process. But unlike Gloucester there was no expectation.
‘There’s more of a priority of getting success more quickly here,’ he said. ‘I can’t copy and paste what I did at the Lions. We can’t accept two years of trial and error before we start winning.
‘It is different from the Lions where we went out of Super Rugby and came back with a young team. Here you have got the likes of John Afoa, Jeremy Thrush, Charlie Sharples, Billy Twelvetrees and Ben Morgan, guys who have played international rugby who are leaders you can rely upon.
‘I made it quite clear that if you want to play for this side then you must earn the jersey. You need to show me why you need to put on the jersey.’
Not everything has been ‘smooth sailing’ as Ackermann puts it.
This week details emerged of a fracas outside a nightclub involving Ackermann and his son Ruan
that left a man with facial wounds. The club have publicly backed their head coach, who joined in the summer, and are confident he will be cleared — police are still investigating, with an update likely in the new year.
It is not the first controversy Ackermann, a former policeman, has been embroiled in. When he was 27, a year after his Test debut, he tested positive for the steroid nandrolone and was banned from the sport for two years.
‘At the time I was in the Springboks team and I was probably the first choice,’ he explained.
‘ I tore my knee ligaments. At three months I still couldn’t straighten my knee. Obviously something had gone wrong. At six months, I still couldn’t run.
‘As a young player who had just tasted Test rugby you are open to any ideas and the medical person who I was in the police said to me that I would always be in pain unless you build up the muscles that you have lost in your knee — why don’t you use a supplement or steroid.
‘I said, “If it will help I will use it but I don’t want to do anything illegal”. He said it would be out in a few weeks. As an uninformed athlete you trust people whose job it is to help injured people. I made a mistake.
‘When I got tested a few months later it was positive and I had to pay the price. The saddest thing is the side where I missed a lot of caps, both at provincial and international level. There’s the fact that financially I lost a fair bit. I had to give up my house and car.
‘At that stage, I had just bought a house and I lost it because on a police salary I could not afford it.
‘The good thing is that the flame in me didn’t die.
‘After two years I still felt there was unfinished business and desperately wanted to play for the Springboks again.’
He did. During his ban Victor Matfield and Bakkies Botha took his place, and formed one of the great second-row partnerships in the sport’s history.
But Ackermann returned, becoming the oldest player to represent South Africa, his 13th and final cap handed to him as a 37-year-old.
Ten years on he has moved his family –—16-year- old daughter, 19-year-old son, wife Crystal and brilliant back-rower Ruan, 21 — to Gloucester to settle into his new project.
With Afrikaans their first language the Ackermanns have found adapting tough at times.
But if Johan can enlighten Gloucester and become the new king of Castle Grim he will win many friends out west.