How the 'wrong' school made Bulls star Coetzee work tirelessly to get to the right place

SOUTH African rugby's sizzling sensation Cameron Hanekom this week made a reverential comment about the “hardebaard” of the Bulls team, Marcell Coetzee.

- MIKE GREENAWAY

“I don’t want to disappoint Marcell,” Hanekom said. “He made 31 tackles against Munster. He is my role model.”

The respect with which Hanekom spoke of the 33-year-old Coetzee reminded me of the chapter I wrote on Coetzee in my book, The Fireside Springbok. I'd like to revisit the “making of Marcell”, because it is by no accident that he is such a special player.

When Coetzee finished high school in 2009 at Port Natal in Durban, there was great excitement about the annual party week at Margate, the pilgrimage for Afrikaans school-leavers all over the country.

Coetzee did not go. He wanted to, but he would be enrolling at the Sharks Academy a month later as a paying student.

He had no bursary or Craven Week credentials, and wanted to give himself an edge. He went to Pretoria instead, and spent that December training with Jannie Brooks, the former Bulls hooker who runs the Garage Gym.

Coetzee walked into the Sharks Academy fitter than any other student, and by the end of the year, he was training with the Sharks.

He had caught John Plumtree’s eye, and made his Sharks debut against the Brumbies a day before his 20th birthday, having bypassed the Under-21 ranks.

He was that good, whether at No 8, 7 or 6.

“I recall my first day at the Academy,” Coetzee told me in a 2012 interview.

“One of the lecturers said: ‘There are 90 of you here, only one or two might play for the Sharks. Why should it be you?’

“And I sat there smiling and thinking: ‘They have Craven Week, they have bursaries, but I am fitter and hungrier’.”

Missing out on Craven Week was a massive disappointment for Coetzee. He was a casualty of going to the “wrong” school.

As a consequence, he almost took a different career path, not because he is a quitter, but because his family was of modest means.