Tom Van Vollenhoven
Spring-heeled South African rugby union player who became a rugby league star at St Helens
TOM VAN VOLLENHOVEN, who has died in South Africa aged 82, was a speedy wing three-quarter who excelled as a Springbok in rugby union before being recruited into rugby league in Britain; he became a legend at St Helens, where his try-scoring records are still unbeaten after more than 50 years.
He made his debut for South Africa aged 20 at Ellis Park, Johannesburg, against the 1955 British and Irish Lions, playing out of position at centre in the first Test the Springboks had ever lost on home soil. At the end of one of the greatest Test matches ever played, the score was 23-22, the Springboks missing a last-minute conversion.
Five Springboks were dropped for the second Test in Cape Town and Van Vollenhoven expected to be one of them. Instead, he was switched to his best position on the wing, from where he scored the first hat-trick by a South African in an international.
His third try, in which he slipped past Tony O’reilly, the star of the Lions tour, then outpaced the covering scrum-half, Dickie Jeeps, and bamboozled the full-back, Angus Cameron, to score under the posts, is still played on Youtube as one of the most brilliant individual scores ever seen.
Karel Thomas Van Vollenhoven was born at Bethlehem in the Orange Free State on April 29 1935 into a family of Dutch immigrants who had arrived in South Africa in the 19th century. He was educated at the Voortrecker High School in Bethlehem, where PW Botha, South Africa’s last white president, had been a pupil 20 years before. He was a sickly child and was urged to take up athletics and gymnastics to strengthen his lungs.
His exceptional speed in schoolboy sport brought him to the attention of Northern Transvaal and his performances for them quickly propelled him into contention for the Springboks. Thanks to his years in the gym, he was unusually agile; his somersaults and back-flips would amuse his rugby team-mates in training.
After the Lions series he took part in a Springbok tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1956, but he had earned only seven caps when rugby league scouts from England came calling. Wigan and St Helens had first approached O’reilly, who declined their offers and urged them to go to South Africa and look at Van Vollenhoven instead.
St Helens were successful in securing his services, it is said, because the messenger bearing the telegram offer from Wigan had a puncture. Wigan already had the legendary Billy Boston on their books, so they missed the chance to have two of the greatest rugby league wingers of all time in the same team.
Van Vollenhoven admitted that he had moved “for the money”, despite being uprooted from his homeland and family, since rugby union was then an amateur game and the only two paid jobs he had got since leaving school had been as a policeman and as a miner in Southern Rhodesia.
He scored 392 tries in 408 games for St Helens, twice scoring six tries in a match. In the 1958-59 season he scored 62 tries, which is still a record. The spring-heeled Springbok with the fair-haired crew-cut became a favourite with the crowd, to whom he was known as “Voll.”
In 1959, when he scored a hat-trick against Hunslet in the Challenge Cup final, his third try is still remembered for a length-of-the field run of blistering pace in which he weaved and danced his way past six defenders.
A winning try he scored in the 1961 final against Wigan in front of 94,000 spectators, inter-passing all the way with his centre Ken Large, is described as the best one ever seen at Wembley.
As a South African, he could not play international rugby league. The nearest he came was as a guest for a Great Britain team in a trial for the 1968 World Cup. In this, his final appearance, he scored a hat-trick.
Van Vollenhoven returned to South Africa on his retirement and was given a job at a subsidiary of Pilkington’s, the glass company, for whom he had worked in England.
He came back to St Helens from South Africa at the age of 77 to open their new stadium. After a typically modest speech, he was asked for his greatest achievement. After a pause he exploded with delight: “I once scored three tries against Tony O’reilly!”
Van Vollenhoven is the only South African included in the Rugby League Hall of Fame and was chosen as the greatest overseas player to have appeared in the Challenge Cup in its 113-year history.
His last visit to Britain was in 2014 to watch one of his five grandchildren, Bianca Mann, represent South Africa as an artistic gymnast at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.
He is survived by his wife Leonie, to whom he was married for 60 years, a son and daughter; another son predeceased him.
Tom Van Vollenhoven, born April 29 1935, died October 21 2017