Little Eben Etzebeth grows up

Eben Etzebeth was not a big child: “I was a very late developer, very late. Even now I can’t grow a proper beard.”

Born into a family of champion wrestlers, bar-room brawlers, and giants, he suffered the worst ignominy imaginable for an Etzebeth in the blue collar town of Parow: he played rugby in the backline.

But during Grades 10 and 11, he finally grew into a proper Etzebeth. In those three years, he gained 50 pounds and 50 centimetres in stature. In his last year of high school, his coach finally let him play in the pack.

Perhaps this is why he is a good tackler. He does not just flail or lunge at the last minute, being used to a long wingspan. When hunting the ball carrier, Etzebeth moves, bends his knees, even sprints to the tackle (as seen this weekend, when he ran down a Puma jail break), and looks like a giant wing.

That’s what he was as late as his second-last season at Tygerberg High School: a wing (on the B team). He can man a wider channel than most forwards.

How sure a tackler is Etzebeth? Looking at the last 2,573 minutes of elite rugby (2015 and 2016 Super Rugby and Rugby Championship, the 2015 Rugby World Cup and the 2016 incoming Irish series), Etzebeth’s tackling statistics are jaw-dropping:

– 329 tackles completed (one for every 12.7 minutes of game time)
– Only 9 misses (only one miss in 792 minutes of Super Rugby 2015)
– 97.3 per cent tackle success rate
– He tends to go 285 minutes in between tackle misses; or over three full games

For a No. 4 enforcer lock to miss only a handful of tackles a year, when most of his tackles are R-rated or worse, is a bonus for his coaches at the Stormers and the Boks.

He played his 25th consecutive Test match for the Springboks in Nelspruit last weekend. If he stays healthy this season, he will reach his half century of caps before his 25th birthday. Pundits are fond of using the phrase “his name is the first one written down by the coach.” In this case, it is almost certainly true.

Nobody is protesting now, when someone claims Etzebeth is well on the way to eclipsing legendary hard man Bakkies Botha, because Etzebeth ticks more boxes.

He can give you eighty minutes if you need it; with a work rate that seldom dips.

He can move his 117 kilograms faster than Botha ever dreamed (he has been clocked over 40 metres at 5.11 seconds) and is better than Botha was at carrying the ball and passes accurately on the move.

A good example came at Nelspruit during the winning movement: Etzebeth was the first receiver in space, drew three defenders before hitting Bryan Habana in stride for assist-to-the-assist-to-the-try.

Like Botha, he is excellent in the lineout. Etzebeth stole an opponent’s throw 17 times in this year’s Super Rugby tournament and over the last two years has over thirty lineout steals. To put Etzebeth’s lineout theft tally in context, the Waratahs stole eight in the entire 2016 Super Rugby season.

Kieran Read, a noted lineout robber, took three in 2015 and four in 2016. Etzebeth stole 17 in 757 minutes of play.

Like Botha, he is a powerhouse in the scrum, cleans hard, and is a safe restart claimer, but he is stronger than the old Bull and less prone to be carded.

In fact, as a professional, Etzebeth has spent no time in the sin bin at all. He was yellow carded as an Under-20 for coming in at the side and he was cited in 2012 after making the beginning of a head-butt motion towards Wallaby Nathan Sharpe, but has worked to earn a clean reputation.

You would have thought Etzebeth would be just as ill-disciplined as the belligerent Botha, given his family pedigree. Back in the day, just mentioning the Etzebeth family in the Parow area would trigger fear.

The Etzebeths were legitimately the hard men of Parow. His uncles ‘Skattie’ and Cliffie Etzebeth were legendary bar fights.

Skattie was killed in 1993 while collecting a debt, but Cliffie is still going strong. At age 62 he won the world amateur wrestling title in 2012.

When they were Eben’s age, Cliffie and Skattie would go looking for fights in the Parow Hotel over weekends:

“It was easy, you know. You just take someone’s drink and wait for him to react. At the end of the month we’d go to the Parow Hotel when the Railway okes got paid. It was never hard to start a fight.”

One night Skattie decked a young farmer at a Stellenbosch dance. Skattie carried on drinking. A few minutes later the confused farmer got up and started walking unsteadily. Skattie looked up, put his drink down and said: “Oh, I can see you’re up already!” and knocked him out again.

Cliffie actually played rugby for the championship-winning Western Province in the Seventies and Eighties; and doubled as the Province’s captain’s bodyguard when visiting Pretoria, by order of Doc Danie Craven himself.

While his uncles were almost all wrestlers who flirted with the wrong side of the law, Eben’s father was a policeman. Either way, as lawman or lawless, an Etzebeth is not allowed to defer.

“People will know if you are hard,” Etzebeth told the Irish Times. “It is not standing back from anyone. Don’t ever move back or avoid confrontation. It’s the people we are.”

Still, he knows the line and he knows he cannot emulate his uncles: “You would get locked up for doing what they did. You can’t do that anymore. You can get away with a bit of pushing and shoving, but if you punch someone then you risk being on the sidelines. Small margins.”

2012 was his breakthrough year. Aged 20, he steamrollered Bismarck du Plessis at a packed Newlands. During that pre-season, he told his strength coach the 65kg dumbbells were too light; before 75 kg dumbbells arrived, he strapped extra weight on the 60-fives to try to take his 19-inch biceps to twenty.

He was voted South African Young Player of the Year in 2012 and 2013 and has been nominated for the IRB Player of the Year. The past two seasons he, Brodie Retallick, and Sam Whitelock have been waging a quiet, but serious battle for “best lock” bragging rights, with Maro Itoje stepping into the picture as well.

He always connects his present to the past: “My family where they grew up they had quite tough love. I think my parents always wanted the best for me. It was probably just in the blood, the toughness.”