Old Queen’s pupil Rocco calls it a day

FROM ninth team schools’ rugby to playing in Super Rugby, former Queen’s College scholar Rocco Jansen has hung up his boots.

After a nine-year professional career which began at the Bulls, including Super Rugby action for the Cheetahs and long service at the Griquas – where the 29-year-old winger ended his career – Jansen has opted to trade his rugby boots and scrum cap for gumboots and a mining cap.

No, he will not literally be going underground, but Jansen, who also represented the Emerging Springbok team on three occasions (scoring one try), caught many by surprise when he opted to retire and follow a path to the mining business sector.

“From the beginning of the year I had an idea that this would probably happen at this time,” Jansen told Times Media following his retirement after this year’s rugby season.

“There comes a time when one has to quit no matter what the reasons are.

“My contract at the Griquas was coming to an end at the end of this season but I had quite a few options with a number of talks to move to another union.

“It was not because of injury, but rather that the timing was right. I did not leave angry or frustrated, but from early in the year there were a few decisions that I took that would need for me to retire.”

The former Queen’s College first team flyhalf will now join a company called Industrial and Mining which specialises in industrial supplies and mining services, and he is one of three shareholders.

Jansen reflected with glee on a career he sums up as one which afforded him opportunities opened tremendous doors.

“I had an opportunity to travel the world. I would go out on a Friday or Saturday and do something I loved doing.”

Jansen remembered how even while playing U14 B rugby at Queen’s College he knew he wanted to become a professional rugby player. In Grade 10 he played for the school’s ninth team, and not even this took his eye off his dream.

It was not until his matric year in 2004 that he made the school’s first XV, switching from scrumhalf to flyhalf.

This almost became the end of the road for him as a future in rugby seemed bleak when rejection letters from rugby academies filled the Jansen family post box in Queenstown during his matric year.

“I can never thank my family enough for the role they played in ensuring my success in rugby,” he said. “What people don’t know is that my brother (Marco, a former Border Bulldogs centre), while I could not get a full scholarship from any of the rugby academies, filled in forms and sent them to Potchefstroom University without my knowledge, and the next thing I got a letter of acceptance, with a full bursary.”

It was at the North-West University that Jansen’s career took off under coach Hannes Esterhuizen, who fine-tuned his skills until he was taken to the Blue Bulls by Heyneke Meyer and Ricardo Loubscher at the end of 2006.

Although most of his time will be occupied by his business in the Northern Cape, Jansen has not entirely shut the door to future involvement in rugby, suggesting that he is willing to pass down the skills he has acquired over the years.

and