Little Faf de Klerk gets his mojo working
Once told that he was too small, the Lions scrumhalf set out to prove his detractors wrong
IT took a brute of a man, Jimmy Stonehouse, to find the size of the fight in scrumhalf Faf de Klerk, who was told his whole life that he was too small to play elite rugby.
The beauty of rugby is that there’s a position for all shapes and sizes – big, tall and even rotund – and scrumhalf is reserved for the plucky little guy.
But when you’re told you’re too tiny to even play No 9, then you can get despondent and wonder if you’re meant to play the game. Not De Klerk.
The Hoërskool Waterkloof old boy initially had dreams of playing for the Blue Bulls after representing them at under-16 and at Craven Week. But they weren’t interested.
When the Lions told him he was too small at under-21, having gone through their development systems from under-19, De Klerk packed his bags for Nelspruit. There, former Pumas coach Stonehouse helped De Klerk turn his sackful of lemons into freshly squeezed lemonade and nobody cared about his size when he returned to Johannesburg on loan.
“There were a few guys in [Lions] management who said that it was never going to happen for me because of my size,” said the 1.69m De Klerk.
“But that’s never been a problem for me. I’ve always tried to play the same way. If you can make your tackles, it doesn’t matter what size you are. I wanted to prove those guys wrong.
“Stonehouse realised what was in a player and he could see which guys had a lot of potential, whereas other unions used their bigger names and did not give other guys a chance.
“He gave a few of us like myself and Vincent Koch an opportunity. We still had to work for it. He was hard on us but he made us better players for it. He was always straight- forward when he wanted us to work on something.
“Since I left the Lions the management changed almost completely and for the better. Coach Ackers [Johan Ackermann] and Swys [De Bruin] are more concerned about how you play and not your weight or your height.”
De Klerk’s tenacity earned him an invite to the Springbok training camp in Johannesburg, the biggest compliment to his skills to date.
The Lions were static on at- tack at the beginning of the season. The half-back combination of Ross Cronje and Marnitz Boshoff was about as fluid as a sledgehammer.
When De Klerk linked up with Elton Jantjies, suddenly, the pair brought the heat to the backline. You couldn’t compare the two combinations. One was like an arranged marriage and the other a spicy affair.
It’s his quickness of thought and fleetness of foot — much of it borrowed from Wallaby great George Gregan — that the 23year-old says could earn him a surprise ticket to the World Cup in the UK in September.
“When I was a youngster I looked up to scrumhalves who made a lot of breaks and did a lot of spectacular stuff, like George Gregan,” he said.
“I loved his back-passes and blind passes. I tried to model my game according to how well he did the basics and the accuracy of his passes. And then I added a little bit of X-factor.
“The biggest thing Meyer’s looking for is someone who can speed up the game and can make the plays faster.
“He wants a good passer and someone with speed. To know that you’re so close and to know that if you work a little harder you’ll probably get a chance — that motivated me to keep playing well. But you want to be there when the World Cup team gets named, not just at a camp.”
I looked up to scrumhalves who made a lot of breaks and did spectacular stuff, like George Gregan