ALTHOUGH my final surge into the top tier of world rugby was sudden in 1999, I was very blessed to have been nurtured from a young age by special coaches and was fortunate to have been part of a number of incredibly successful teams, starting at Paul Roos Gymnasium School in Stellenbosch.
Everything was set up for me to become a Springbok. I had three rugby coaches growing up who were provincial props; it was next level and I never received the same level of technical scrum coaching in the rest of my 14 years of pro rugby which could compare to my school coach, Jacques Hanekom. The team I...