Rugby’s renaissance man still playing for the fun of it
South African hooker Schalk Brits has defied convention throughout his career. Mick Cleary meets him
The six-year-old kid in bare feet did not worry that the frozen turf in Mossel Bay, South Africa, was cutting into his skin. Schalk Brits played on. Several years later he was to be as single-minded in resisting attempts to make him switch position from hooker to centre. Brits played on again in his particular, invigorating way. He has always known what he has wanted; always loved going eyeball-to-eyeball with his opposite number in the murky depths of a scrum before drawing breath to execute a perfect line-out throw and then running from all parts of the field.
Brits refuses to be pigeonholed. He has been called too small, too loose and, these days at Saracens, too old. He is still defying convention as he showed in his breathless contribution to the 55-24 win over Northampton at Twickenham last weekend and will do again at the Rec in Bath today.
Brits runs. Brits sidesteps. Brits offloads. He is rugby’s 36-year-old renaissance man who has deferred retirement for one more year, a possible MBA or studies at Oxbridge on hold.
Brits is something of a throwback, a man whose primary spur is fun, who took up his first professional contract with Western Province at the age of 18 with the thought that the money would help fund his studies – he completed a four-year degree course in management accountancy at Stellenbosch University – and help buy his pals a beer or two. Little has changed since, although his pool of friends at the bar has grown.
His first thought is of others, of his value to the collective. There is little of the solitary about Brits, born an only child at Empangeni in Kwazulu-natal to Maryna and Chris Brits.
“My mother had an accident aged 17 when she fell off a bridge and suffered radiation effects,” recounts Brits. “She was told that she couldn’t conceive.
“Fertility treatment was tried but appeared not to have worked. That is, until she discovered she was six months pregnant with me. And then I was two months premature.”
There were inquiries about adopting children, which did not come to fruition so Schalk grew up on his own. Yet he has never been a loner – far from it, he is an open, gregarious sort.
“How much fun is there to be had in sharing success only with yourself?” muses Brits. “I’ve always been drawn to the notion of a team, even as a wrestler [Brits performed to junior national level] it was all about the people around you.”
As with most young South Africans, sport was a focal point: rugby, cricket, wrestling, swimming, tennis and golf. The family moved to Mossel Bay down on the verdant Garden Route when Brits was three.
He played barefoot from the age of six to 13, no mean feat through winter. Then the decision was taken for him to be schooled at the Paul Roos Gymnasium in
Stellenbosch. “The housemasters there, Jock Hanekon and Frans van Niekerk, shaped me, as teachers and still as mentors, spanking [then still allowed in South Africa] when I was naughty in trying to sneak out to the girls’ residences but handing down life lessons,” said Brits.
By the age of 18, Brits had been offered a contract with Western Province. He continued with his studies. And the pressure to switch position became a constant theme.
“They like a big hooker in South Africa,” says Brits with a smile. “Would I have won more caps if I had changed? Who knows? I have no regrets. I resisted. I didn’t want to be 108kgs. I didn’t want to just be known as someone who hits rucks, mauls and scrummages. They’re all important, yes, but, for me, there is more to it than that.
“I wanted to be right in there, one-on-one with my opposite number, usually much bigger than me, using my technique against his force, doing my basics but then having a free role, to use my instincts and imagination.” As he has to wondrous effect. Brits was one of the founding acquisitions of the Saracens revolution in 2009, the brainchild of Brendan Venter and former chief executive Edward Griffiths. A beer and a steak with Venter at the Wijnhuis restaurant in Newlands sealed the deal.
“My friend, [former Springbok captain] Jean de Villiers asked me why I was going to a club that had had little success while he was heading to Munster, who were European champions,” recalls Brits. “Brendan merely said that was the whole point.
“Why just be another number somewhere else? Saracens was to be an adventure with a bunch of guys creating memories.”
So it has proved, with Brits central to the ethos of that project. There was far more money on the table for Brits from Toulouse and Clermont Auvergne. It is fair to say it has worked out pretty well, even if he has had his moments of indiscretion. He was sent off in 2016 for punching Gloucester’s Nick Wood and threw a haymaker at his Saracens team-mate Owen Farrell when playing for the Barbarians against the British and Irish Lions in Hong Kong on their way to Australia in 2013. Brits was yellow-carded and there was a distinct froideur in Farrell’s reaction.
“Yeah, and the first thing Edward [Griffiths] did when we did get back together at Saracens a couple of months later was to make us room-mates on the pre-season tour,” said Brits. And what of him being photographed on that Barbarians trip sharing beers with team-mates at Happy Valley Racetrack, even though there had been a supposed ban on drinking before the game? “No, there wasn’t a ban,” he says now. “Just that we were told to rein back a bit.”
Brits had thought of retiring last season. Then data revealed that he was hitting better numbers for rucks and tackles than he achieved in 2013. He stayed on, but this is the final encore. And then? “Five years ago, I had job offers back in South Africa and I couldn’t see myself staying on in England,” said Brits. “But my three children have been born here, in Luton, and England is very much part of me. But what can give me the same fulfilment that rugby has? A team-mate told me to stop trying to find something. It was like looking for the unicorn, mission impossible. But I don’t want to be an old boy yet. I still like being a kid.”
The Mossel Bay boy has another eight months of fun in him yet.
‘I didn’t want to just be known as someone who hits rucks, mauls and scrummages’