Ken Borland

Nizaam Carr is a Springbok loose forward who hasn’t had much game time since joining the Bulls, but he said on Tuesday that working with coach Jake White has been one of the best relationships of his career and the desire at Loftus Versfeld is strong to avoid what the player called “the same fate as Liverpool”.

With the talismanic Duane Vermeulen currently unavailable after minor knee surgery, Carr could well get his chance to shine in the preparation series that starts this weekend, with the Bulls taking on Eastern Province in Pretoria on Sunday. The former Stormers and Wasps star said the message from White has been clear: Even though several of the stars who won both SuperRugby Unlocked and the Currie Cup might not be playing, the Bulls are looking to improve their game still further.

“The message from Jake was that we have to take it to the next level, whether that’s in our diet, our training, our gym or whatever. What happened to Liverpool, what my friends have been telling me about them because I’m not a big football fan … we don’t want to suffer the same fate. So we need to do something different to stay on top, we need to take our game up a notch.

“This series is the perfect opportunity for us to prepare and you can see everyone want this opportunity. I always back myself to start but I will do whatever I can to help the team, like I had to do for the Currie Cup final. But I have a good understanding with Jake and the other coaches, in fact my relationship with Jake is one of the best I’ve experienced with a coach. It’s been fantastic to continue my journey with these fantastic people,” Carr said on Tuesday.

Carr is probably competing with former Springbok Sevens star Tim Agaba for the eighthman berth vacated by Vermeulen. While Agaba will bring work-rate and physicality to the role, Carr said he sees his strength as being the more classical ability to link with the backs.

“I want to play eighthman, I feel I am best there, but it is nice that I can cover a lot of options and different coaches want different things from their eighthman. My strength is linking, mixing it up with the forwards and backs, doing the dirty work if necessary and bringing a high tackle count. I’m also a lineout option although I’m not the biggest guy.

“I’m not one of those 120kg or 1.95 metres guys, but I bring something else to the party. I have not played as much as I would have liked here, so it feels like my first game again, something I am really looking forward to. It’s a big opportunity, that’s the motivator for all of us, we want to showcase what we’ve got, show that we can turn up at this level, given the opportunity,” Carr said.

It’s been a tough year for Western Province rugby and they have now come to the point of the season when they can either mount a strong challenge for the Currie Cup title or finish among the also-rans.

It is certainly squeaky-bum time and Saturday’s match against the Free State Cheetahs in Bloemfontein is probably the one that will determine whether they can remember the last 12 months with at least some fondness. Win with a bonus point and they go top of the log heading into the last round of fixtures; lose and they could find themselves struggling just to make the semi-finals.

Western Province coach John Dobson is not satisfied, however, just to be in contention; their extraordinary defeats to the Bulls and Lions on successive weekends and recent growth in the number of penalties his team is conceding are weighing on his mind.

“We’re in the curious position of finishing anywhere from first to fifth, which is great for the competition. We always knew one of the so-called bigger franchises would lose out on the semi-finals, but I’m not thrilled that it might still be us. Those 22-20 and 22-19 losses to the Bulls and Lions in successive weeks have been a real knock for us.

“We don’t want to have to win next week against the Sharks so this weekend against the Cheetahs is an opportunity for us to wrap up a semi-final place, then we can talk about where we want to be playing that semi-final. So Saturday in Bloem is not quite a quarterfinal but it is still a game of massive importance for us,” Dobson said on Wednesday.

Those selfsame Sharks, who just a couple of weeks ago were the pacesetters after their impressive win over the Bulls, are now the big city team most in danger of missing out on the semi-finals as they are currently in fourth place, just two points ahead of Free State.

They host Griquas in Durban on Saturday and while they would normally be expected to easily overcome the team from Kimberley, the Sharks are currently sitting with Covid problems and have suffered heavy defeats in their last two matches against the Lions and Cheetahs.

Assistant coach Brent Janse van Rensburg said he was not willing to use the health problems as an excuse.

“The Covid disruptions aren’t ideal, it affects your training programme in the week and then affects the availability of players. But it doesn’t help to make excuses, we don’t have an excuses mentality. We embrace the challenges as they come and how you apply your mind to those challenges will determine how you come out on the other end,” Janse van Rensburg said.

The Lions, third on the log, two points behind Western Province, travel to Nelspruit on Saturday to take on neighbours the Pumas. Their big Boxing Day clash with their other neighbours, the Bulls, was postponed, so they will be hoping to carry on the momentum that saw them beat Western Province, Free State and the Sharks on successive weekends.

Springbok tighthead prop Marcel van der Merwe began his professional rugby career at the Free State Cheetahs in 2011 and would play alongside and scrum against a strong but raw loosehead from Limpopo by the name of Trevor Nyakane.

In 2013 Van der Merwe joined the Blue Bulls and made his Super Rugby debut for them the following year. Nyakane followed the Welkom-born, Paarl Boys’ High School educated tighthead to Pretoria, with Van der Merwe then leaving for Toulon in June 2016.

The 29-year-old Van der Merwe will now return to the Bulls after four years in France and he will find Nyakane has not only switched to tighthead prop but become an integral part of both the Bulls and Springbok teams. There will be competition aplenty now for what new Bulls coach Jake White has called the most important position in the team, and Nyakane welcomes it.

Not only because it will push the 31-year-old to even greater heights but it will also help manage his workload. Nyakane had very little respite in last year’s Super Rugby competition, starting every single game, all 17 of them. Eventually all that physical strain adds up and it may have played a role in his unfortunate departure from the 2019 World Cup, after tearing a calf muscle in the second half of the opening game against the All Blacks.

“I played with Marcel at both Free State and the Bulls and I know the type of player he is, so it’s going to be amazing to have him in the squad. We can now look at alternating at tighthead, it’s always great to be able to do that, but you also want to play of course. But it’s really difficult in a full season to play every game,” Nyakane told The Citizen at the One Cup of Pap Feeding Scheme, alongside fellow World Cup winners John Smit and Joel Stransky, who were also helping to hand out food parcels.

White has been quick to make changes at the Bulls and Nyakane said it will be exciting times when the squad finally gets together again after Lockdown. “It’s always exciting having a new coach to change things up a bit and I look forward to meeting up with Jake and everyone else when we go back to Loftus. The coach has obviously been bulking up the squad, which only makes it easier to rotate and manage players, and to have fresh blood coming in will be a positive,” Nyakane said.

The lure of 200 Test caps was strong, but with the excitement of getting engaged, the approach of her 30^th birthday and the new teaching job she has started, South African women’s hockey star Sulette Damons decided to call time on her illustrious career last week after making 198 appearances for the national team.

Robin van Ginkel, the new coach, recently held the second training camp of the year and the women’s national team is going to be a different, less exuberant environment without Damons, who was as loved off the field for her personality as she was respected on it, being one of the co-captains for last year’s World Cup, the most recent action the team saw.

“It would have been nice to reach 200, but I reached what I needed to and I played in three Commonwealth Games, three World Cups and an Olympic Games, so I feel like I’ve done all I could. I am getting older and I feel it’s the right time to concentrate on my career as a teacher and I’ve just got engaged as well,” Damons told Saturday Citizen.

Blessed with terrific pace and ball-skills, Damons played on the wing and scored and set up many goals for South Africa. The child of a domestic worker, Damons feasted on every opportunity that came her way and is truly an inspirational transformation success story.

Raised in the Umasizakhe township in Graaff-Reinet, Damons’ life changed when the family who employed her mother, Frances Buffels, funded her schooling at Union primary and high schools. The brilliance that lay within her DNA was soon recognised and she captained both her school and the Eastern Province hockey teams.

Damons then won a bursary to the University of Potchefstroom (Pukke) and was chosen for the SA U21 team in 2008, before making her debut for South Africa in 2010, at the World Cup in Rosario, Argentina.

She made the most dramatic of entrances into international hockey as well, scoring the winner against Spain.

“My favourite goal was most definitely the one on debut in the 2010 World Cup, my first international goal, against Spain. It was the winner and it was South Africa’s first win at the World Cup in a long time, so it was my best goal ever.

“Captain Marsha Marescia was at halfway and I just saw a gap so I started sprinting and she hit a backsticks aerial pass over everyone, and it was just me and the goalkeeper in the circle. I put my stick out and I don’t know how, but by the grace of God the ball hit it and went in!” Damons recalled.

She tended to do well in World Cups and another of her favourite memories is scoring in the 4-2 win over England in the 2014 World Cup at the Hague, in her 150^th game for South Africa.

Having qualified with a B.Ed, Damons is now teaching Grade IIIs in Bloemfontein, where her fiancé lives, at St Michaels School for Girls. Obviously they have got her involved in hockey as well, and she coaches the U13A side. A career in coaching might just lay ahead.

“Once I find my feet in coaching, maybe I’ll look to take it further. For now I still want to play a bit, for both my club and province, and hopefully I can play in the Premier Hockey League [PHL] as well,” Damons said.

Never mind her coaching expertise, Damons’ life story is enough to inspire and she says her success was all about exposure, and believes that is the answer to the all-important transformation questions facing South African hockey.

“Transformation is important because there is a lot of talent in this country and a lot of players are talented enough to reach what I did. The potential is there but it’s all about exposure, which is why the PHL is great, it allows the up-and-coming prospects to play with experienced players. We just need to make sure there are enough tournaments for these players,” Damons said.

And while the national team bombed out at the first stage of last year’s World Cup, finishing 15^th out of 16 teams, Damons said all is not doom and gloom in that department, with change afoot.

“The change of coach was good and they’ve had a good start to the year under Robin, plus there’s more staff and a bigger squad now, it’s not just the same people over and over. There’s a lot of youth in that squad so that’s very healthy, it ensures the senior players don’t feel too comfortable because now there’s more competition.

“The youngsters are hungry and want experience. The biggest issue though is finances and if you don’t have that you can’t compete and we’ll still be behind the other teams. But if they can fix that and have more training camps and tours then they will be okay. The difficulty is hockey is an amateur sport in South Africa and we need players who are willing to take unpaid leave or put their studies on hold,” Damons said.

But if stories like Damons’ – a life transformed and now she is busy transforming other lives – don’t inspire support for hockey then it is difficult to know what will.

https://citizen.co.za/sport/south-african-sport/2093593/women-in-sport-sulette-damons-transformed-hockey-now-shes-transforming-lives/