If you ask a rugby expert of the last 20 years who was the scariest player on the field, you can bet with as much certainty as Thomas Ramos in front of goal that they will answer Bakkies Botha.
It must be said that the colossus of the Springboks, beyond his head as thick as an oven and his hands raised on a South African farm, had an evocative nickname: the executioner. While he obviously loved playing it and occasionally found someone to talk to, many still remember their meeting with Botha with a certain sourness.
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In short, we weren't joking with Mr. John Philip. Because as gentle a man as he claims to be in life, Victor Matfield's former sidekick also knew how to be the most intimidating man in the world, even when the crampons were put away.
And Mourad Boudjellal, sometimes a little arrogant and provocative with anyone when he thought he was in the right, learned this the hard way, when he had just recruited the South African and did not want to pay him because he was injured in the selection. “See you in court. I said he would be paid from the moment he started playing. And told him that he should be paid because his contract had started. We'll stay there for at least a month.”
Bakkies Botha, he's 2m05 and 130 kilos, he's a monster. One day, I was quietly in my office and there, with horror, I see this kind of monster Bakkies Botha who sits in front of me without saying a word and who begins to crack the bones of his fingers, sitting , without saying a word and looking at me.
With the humor and phrasing that characterizes him, the former president of the RCT then confides that he is afraid for him. “I'm opposite in a small office and my only escape route is to throw myself out of the window. In front of me, the guy hunts the wild boar in close combat, so to hunt the Boudjellal he had no problem.”
“I get by in English but not 100% no, no more. But I don't know why, that day, I understood everything he said to me. He told me that he was living very badly to the situation, that it was on the verge of exploding and that a solution had to be found.”
Response from “Mourad de Toulon”: “I told him we would find a solution. I had the drops. And I realized that the courts are of little use when you have a conflict to resolve. Ultimately, the thing that resolves conflicts is jitters, fear. Eventually I came to an amicable settlement and pretty much paid him off. I'm still alive.”
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And anecdotes like this about Toulouse's golden period, whether or not they concern the great Bakkies, Boudjellal has dozens in stock…
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