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17 stone centre credits genes and not weight training for massive physique

Rohan Janse van Rensburg (Getty Images)

Rohan Janse van Rensburg wants to power Sale into the Gallagher Premiership play-offs and relaunch his Springbok career with the aim of facing the British and Irish Lions on their 2021 tour of South Africa.

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Van Rensburg, 6ft and 17st, has become one of the most destructive ball-carrying centre’s in Europe and will have a key role to play as Sale attempt to inflict more pain on Saracens when the teams meet in the Premiership at Allianz Park on Saturday. The 25-year-old goes into that game having beaten 47 defenders – more than any other player in the Premiership.

Saracens are already resigned to relegation after breaking the salary cap while Sale are in third place just four points behind leaders Exeter, the team they beat 22-19 at Sandy Park in their last league fixture. Van Rensburg was cited for a big tackle on Exeter’s Gareth Steenson and despite being cleared he had to wait for the verdict after an appeal against the ruling by the Rugby Football Union.

He was again found not guilty and lines up against Saracens, the team that showed Sale the value of a strong South African influence.

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Besides van Rensburg, the Sale squad now features the South African rugby talents of skipper Jono Ross, the three du Preez brothers Rob, Dan and Jean Luc, prop Coenie Oosthuizen, lock Lood de Jager, hooker Akker van der Merwe and mercurial scrumhalf Faf de Klerk who is expected back from his knee ligament injury in two weeks.

If that wasn’t enough to make van Rensburg feel at home, his brother Tiaan has joined the Manchester police force after transferring from Glasgow.

Van Rensburg, whose only cap came against Wales in 2016, is acutely aware of the role Sale played in reviving de Klerk’s test career with the scrumhalf and de Jager having helped the Springboks win the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan by defeating England, featuring teammate Tom Curry, in the final.

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Now, he wants to follow de Klerk’s lead and put together a current CV that warrants a Springbok recall and the looming test series between the World Cup winners and the Lions is a major motivating factor. He told RugbyPass: “My motivation is to try and play for the Springboks and I am going to push hard to get back into the mix even if it’s just to train with them.

“I am going to just keep pushing hard and hopefully my opportunity (to play for the Boks) will come again and I can take it with both hands. After the World Cup they are on such a high and what Rassie (Erasmus) has built is fantastic and you want to be part of that. Talk about joining the Six Nations is interesting and whatever they do will be good for South African rugby.

“We have a lot of South Africans playing here and we are very respectful of everything and with Lood coming in maybe there will be a few different line outs. You hear the guys talking about Lood and saying “that is a big human being” and when he walks into the room there is then a big presence and everyone is excited to see him back.

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“There are a bunch of things that help me perform well and this season things have progressed in the right direction and we have had continuity which helps gel with the guys around you. Our win at Exeter was big and gave us that confidence that when we go away from home that anything can happen. It proved we can go to somewhere like Exeter and get a win and now we have Saracens and I haven’t played there before and after what has happened in the last few months to them they will come out with lots of passion.

“If we stay humble we can reach a top four finish to make the play-offs and the crazy thing is that because of injury and test call ups we haven’t put out our full-strength side yet. It’s been a roller coaster so far but we have a really strong foundation.”

Van Rensburg has battled against serious injury and personal tragedy during his career and in 2017 his mother, Renthia, died of cancer, he suffered a knee injury a month later which ruled him out for 12 weeks then armed robbers broke into his home, threatened his girlfriend and pointed a gun to his head.

The burly centre used rugby to help him over those incidents and opted to join Sale on a three-year deal in June 2018 after a successful loan spell in Manchester, although his former Lions coach Johan Ackermann was interested in taking him to Gloucester. Instead, van Rensburg chose to join Sale and credits Steve Diamond, the club’s director of rugby, for helping him settle in and make the most of his rugby talents with his physique down to genes rather than weight training.

“I have always been the more bulkier guy in the team and there hasn’t been any weight training or power training – it is just the way I am built,” he added. “I have to thank my parents for that.
Sale want us to grow as a unit with a good foundation in your game like kick chase which maybe you don’t think about and they also make sure you play to your strengths.

“Everyone who has come from abroad can just concentrate on their game and it’s a very empowering atmosphere.

“Dimes has an open door policy which is great and my brother has been living here for seven years and was with the police in Glasgow and has now moved down to Manchester. It’s nice to have him close by.”

Van Rensburg is part of a squad containing three sets of brothers – two identical Ben and Tom Curry plus Jean Luc and Dan du Preez – which can cause some confusion as he admitted: “I can tell the difference off the pitch but there have been times in a match when they both played Ben has done something and I have said “well done Ben” and I got the reply “no it’s Tom!”

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J
JW 3 hours ago
'Passionate reunion of France and New Zealand shows Fabien Galthie is wrong to rest his stars'

Ok, managed to read the full article..

... New Zealand’s has only 14 and the professional season is all over within four months. In France, club governance is the responsibility of an independent organisation [the Ligue Nationale de Rugby or LNR] which is entirely separate from the host union [the Fédération Française de Rugby or FFR]. Down south New Zealand Rugby runs the provincial and the national game.

That is the National Provincial Championship, a competition of 14 representative union based teams run through the SH international window and only semi professional (paid only during it's running). It is run by NZR and goes for two and a half months.


Super Rugby is a competition involving 12 fully professional teams, of which 5 are of New Zealand eligibility, and another joint administered team of Pacific Island eligibility, with NZR involvement. It was a 18 week competition this year, so involved (randomly chosen I believe) extra return fixtures (2 or 3 home and away derbys), and is run by Super Rugby Pacific's own independent Board (or organisation). The teams may or may not be independently run and owned (note, this does not necessarily mean what you think of as 'privately owned').


LNR was setup by FFR and the French Government to administer the professional game in France. In New Zealand, the Players Association and Super Rugby franchises agreed last month to not setup their own governance structure for professional rugby and re-aligned themselves with New Zealand Rugby. They had been proposing to do something like the English model, I'm not sure how closely that would have been aligned to the French system but it did not sound like it would have French union executive representation on it like the LNR does.

In the shaky isles the professional pyramid tapers to a point with the almighty All Blacks. In France the feeling for country is no more important than the sense of fierce local identity spawned at myriad clubs concentrated in the southwest. Progress is achieved by a nonchalant shrug and the wide sweep of nuanced negotiation, rather than driven from the top by a single intense focus.

Yes, it is pretty much a 'representative' selection system at every level, but these union's are having to fight for their existence against the regime that is NZR, and are currently going through their own battle, just as France has recently as I understand it. A single focus, ala the French game, might not be the best outcome for rugby as a whole.


For pure theatre, it is a wonderful article so far. I prefer 'Ntamack New Zealand 2022' though.

The young Crusader still struggles to solve the puzzle posed by the shorter, more compact tight-heads at this level but he had no problem at all with Colombe.

It was interesting to listen to Manny during an interview on Maul or Nothing, he citied that after a bit of banter with the All Black's he no longer wanted one of their jersey's after the game. One of those talks was an eye to eye chat with Tamaiti Williams, there appear to be nothing between the lock and prop, just a lot of give and take. I thought TW angled in and caused Taylor to pop a few times, and that NZ were lucky to be rewarded.

f you have a forward of 6ft 8ins and 145kg, and he is not at all disturbed by a dysfunctional set-piece, you are in business.

He talked about the clarity of the leadership that helped alleviate any need for anxiety at the predicaments unfolding before him. The same cannot be said for New Zealand when they had 5 minutes left to retrieve a match winning penalty, I don't believe. Did the team in black have much of a plan at any point in the game? I don't really call an autonomous 10 vehicle they had as innovative. I think Razor needs to go back to the dealer and get a new game driver on that one.

Vaa’i is no match for his power on the ground. Even in reverse, Meafou is like a tractor motoring backwards in low gear, trampling all in its path.

Vaa'i actually stops him in his tracks. He gets what could have been a dubious 'tackle' on him?

A high-level offence will often try to identify and exploit big forwards who can be slower to reload, and therefore vulnerable to two quick plays run at them consecutively.

Yes he was just standing on his haunches wasn't he? He mentioned that in the interview, saying that not only did you just get up and back into the line to find the opposition was already set and running at you they also hit harder than anything he'd experienced in the Top 14. He was referring to New Zealands ultra-physical, burst-based Super style of course, which he was more than a bit surprised about. I don't blame him for being caught out.


He still sent the obstruction back to the repair yard though!

What wouldn’t the New Zealand rugby public give to see the likes of Mauvaka and Meafou up front..

Common now Nick, don't go there! Meafou showed his Toulouse shirt and promptly got his citizenship, New Zealand can't have him, surely?!?


As I have said before with these subjects, really enjoy your enthusiasm for their contribution on the field and I'd love to see more of their shapes running out for Vern Cotter and the like styled teams.

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