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Jungle-living ex-Springbok van Niekerk outlines extraordinary view on recreational drugs in rugby

(Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images)

Ex-Springbok Joe van Niekerk claims that rugby should stop punishing players who take recreational drugs. The 39-year-old, who earned the last of his 52 South African caps in 2010, finished his club career at Toulon in 2014 and has since embraced a new-age lifestyle in the Costa Rican jungle. 

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Asked by French rugby bi-weekly Midi Olympique if doping was widespread in the game during his career, the ex-back row said: “I don’t believe in an organised doping system in rugby but there have always been recreational drugs and frankly, I believe that the rugby authorities should be more lenient with regard to these behaviours.

Suspending a player for six months or a year because he or she took cocaine in the evening seems like an exaggeration. Rather than whipping and destroying, we should accompany the players, reach out to them, help them.

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“We s*** so much s*** after the games: sleeping pills, tramadol (a muscle relaxant)… do you really think it’s good for the body? And yet it is completely legal and widespread. But what bothers me most is seeing alcohol at the centre of everything in rugby. 

“We drank litres and litres of beer, me first. However, there is nothing worse after a rugby match: it freezes the blood, it tires, it dehydrates and it slows healing. But alcohol is a part of everyday life in our sport and its lobbies even finance the biggest competitions.”

What would van Niekerk’s alternative be? “In these mountains, there are a million plants, including cannabis, that can help athletes recover from their efforts. But before it gets down to business, before the pharmaceutical lobbies free the world from their grip, I’m afraid we have time to die twice. Do you realise that we live in a world still afraid of the power of plants? It’s ridiculous…”

When the end came for van Niekerk’s stellar career, he felt nothing but emptiness and it was only when he moved to the Costa Rican wilds that he began to move on with purpose. 

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“The day I ended my rugby career, I felt like a void. I asked myself a question: ‘Who am I now that someone has taken away my life for 20 years?’ Because glory, medals, money and autographs are just an illusion. When everything stops, there are only memories, dust. 

“I thought to myself, ‘I’ve been thinking about myself for 15 years, it’s time to help others.’ With my girlfriend Marie, we wanted to be connected with nature, trees, plants and animals. We both knew Costa Rica. We knew how powerful his nature was. So we decided to drop everything to settle there.

“This valley of Tinamaste is sacred territory, strewn with vestiges of disappeared civilisations. Above all, this place lists the greatest shamans on the planet. With Marie, we bought a piece of land to make it a huge organic farm. 

“Soon we will be able to live in total autonomy, consuming only the vegetables and fruits of our land, drinking pure water from the two springs that flow under our feet… until 2014, I had everything done for me.

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“Today I’m under construction. I’m learning marketing, accounting, farming. I learn how to keep a vegetable garden, feed chickens, speak Spanish. I have a life of a man,” he explained, adding that he hopes the valley in Costa Rica will potentially become a place for rugby teams to visit. 

“All kinds of people visit – business owners, musicians, painters and backpackers. We even host business seminars. In the future, I would very much like to receive rugby teams in pre-season training. In the Tinamaste valley, time allows for a break: we read, we meditate, we drink tea in front of the Andes mountain range while listening to monkeys. And then there are the healing ceremonies.”

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J
JW 2 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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