The Springbok who kept coming back - the making of Bulls coach Ackermann

IN 2001, the Cats rugby team was on a Super 12 tour in Australia. On the rowdy bus trip to a training session, something was said that annoyed Johan Ackermann.

- MIKE GREENAWAY

When the bus broke out in laughter at the offending remark, Ackermann quietly got up and walked to the front of the bus, took the microphone, and sternly said in Afrikaans: “Make a queue. I don't want to go looking for anyone.”

No one moved and the journey continued in reverent silence. That encapsulates the presence commanded by a giant who was mostly gentle, but not always ...

And that reminds me of a Sharks training session I watched in 2005. The forwards were embroiled in a robust mauling session.

Suddenly, there was a mighty bellow and from the centre of the maul, players were flung in all directions, like toothpicks, until there was just Johan Ackermann, the epitome of the Incredible Hulk. Except his face was red, not green.

Somebody (surely mistakenly) had grabbed the big man in the nether region, and the response was volcanic.

Ackermann was from the old school, a throwback to the amateur era of Springbok invincibility when rugby was a peacetime form of warfare, a theatre in which men aspired to the virtues of courage, loyalty and brotherhood.

Men like Ackermann, who was an anachronism in the modern era, where many are pampered prima donnas.

Consider that this guy’s career spanned an incredible two decades - his final match, for the Sharks against the Bulls at Loftus Versfeld in 2008, was 20 years after he had made his debut on the same ground for Northern Transvaal Under-20.

He had shoulder surgery four times, knee surgery twice, a serious neck problem, and a two-year suspension for use of a banned substance. He had careers with the Bulls, Lions, Cats, Sharks and Griquas, and played club rugby in Italy and England. He had three separate Springbok careers, with five-year exiles in between each stint.