Rito Hlungwani and Ben-Jason Dixon on Building the Best Forwards Pack in the URC | Lekker Rugby Pod

And he was like the big guy in our team in training in primary school. And he would just like run and people would be like, be quite scared to tackle him. I was like, I'm just going to dive in like, and it went okay. Like I actually, I actually made like a contact and I got over that fear. You know, like I'll ask Ben Jason's mom or dad to write him a letter and I'll read it in front of his teammate.

It actually challenges me because now if I phone Brock Harry's, when was the place dead, he speaks English, but I have to speak Afrikaans. Andre Smith's dead. I have to speak to him in Afrikaans. I'm like, hello, I have to speak in Afrikaans. If I phone Sazi's mom, I have to speak in Hossa to show, you know, just a little bit of that respect.

Took some Tunu Zulu. I have to speak a bit of Zulu. And then I ask them to read, to write a letter in the language they communicate to their sonny. You know, after that silence, I'll be reading in two-page Afrikaans. or two-piece tosser.

You know, that circle is a circle of connection, of reminding ourselves that once we get onto that field, it's just us. Yeah, I get there and I sit and then there's that loud, loud silence, you know, sometimes almost unbearable. And I think each person now gets an opportunity to really think about why they play the game. And I was sitting in the box before that cornered game and and i was feeling a high level of guilt inside house how can we be letting the boys go play when i'm in this condition i think the boys could be in the worst condition i was feeling quite guilty i was feeling like this double we should not have let the boys play because i know how much pain i was dealing with at the time this is the lecker rugby pod only on megaphone rugby another sunday treat another storm Stormers special, Harry. We've got a couple of these lined up, coaches and players.

I don't think I've seen it anywhere else. And with the main co-owners in the Stormers team, and here I am as a bull supporter talking to Stormers coaching staff and players. We would have believed it. Are you feeling okay? Are you starting to start to like them and overcome your prejudices?

I've always liked them. I just don't support them. There's a big difference there. I actually looked around the world and I don't see anyone doing this, partly because it's scary to be next to your coach. and it's hard to do that.

But in the Stormers world, the atmosphere there, the vibe is that no one is sacred. There's no sacred cows. Everyone can talk about where they're from, what they're thinking about, what they're doing. I cannot be more happy today to introduce two of my favorite, you know, one of my favorite coaches in the rugby world and one of my favorite players, you know, from before, before this podcast even existed. And what a treat.

So firstly, we have Rito Shlengani, forwards coach of the best forwards pack in the ERC. They are top the stats in the mall, obviously more defense, more killing, more swimming, but also the scrum and the lineouts. Somebody had to do that. And it turns out that it's a quantity surveyor from Ghianni of all places, a proud member of the Shungan people. I think it's actually his nickname, Shungan.

So he comes from an area of the world, that you actually spend some time in. Tell us about your shady days in Ghianni. What did you do? why did you why did you have to leave well we left for greener pastures my dad and i had a small business over there and we moved it to polacoane which is petersburg in the old days because we had to get closer to joburg where our market was that's basically the only reason so we lived there for a short while i know what it looks like i know the area i know the government buildings rita the usually impressive government buildings in the middle of absolutely nowhere that was fun oh i heard my story i heard from my sources mba as you know my sources are impeccable is that uh they taught you the um polluto be the dance of the shongan people and it was so brilliant that someone caught you in a star talent search and whisked you away a bit like rito shungani who um his dad a teacher that taught him about education more than grades more than rugby uh and ended up putting him on a bus with 300 rand in his pocket saying good luck to get to the Cape to attend university. And after a 47-hour bus ride, he got to Cape Town and didn't even know where to go next.

But a great story whisked out of surveying by Gertzmal, who found a way to get service in Van der Kloof on the phone, which is amazing, and said he's looking for a line-out coach. So the rest is history. Alongside him today is going to be Ben Jason Dixon, the hardest working angry engineer the a man who has a degree in contact dominance uh that's what he got his degree stalin bosch has a new major uh that's it he's obviously the head boy what were they thinking of paul ruiz he's gone from 102 to 106 to 108 to 114 kgs he used to be a swimmer buddy now he's a proper blindsider and i believe that ben jason's favorite man in the cinematography is spider-man so without further ado envia may i please introduce reto shungani and ben jason dixon yeah there you go he's trying he's trying he's in america what does he know we're really looking forward to this chat yes thank you no it's a pleasure it's always nice to speak to the enemy kind of a thing we spoke to pat mccary from island last week and he told us all about the the Lensda stuff. And he told us Lensda can be even more obnoxious. And you were saying it proudly.

So can the Stormers be even more obnoxious from a guy from Pretoria to a guy from Pretoria? Yeah, we never claimed that character trade for ourselves. We thought more of the Bulls guys as obnoxious. I guess it's the other side. Yeah, I know.

I know exactly what the other side means. The feeling is mutual. Yeah, I know. Yeah, there's no one will tell you more about how they're not than Bulls. I don't know why.

always bragging about others they're not going cut at some point i'm not sure to understand the irony of that so ben jason i know that you obviously come from somerset west i believe um and made your way through the normal pathways but along the way it's been different um first of all you know you do have a degree in engineering and i always think about when you're clearing rocks when you're making a dominant tackle are you actually thinking about engineering are you Are you making solutions? Are you thinking of angles? Are you thinking of the proper way? How do you sort of approach rugby as a problem-solving industrial psychology type of guy? So it's interesting that you think that way.

I meet a lot of people that when they find out they have a degree, they're shocked. I could look a little bit of doff, you know, if you get to know me. but I think it's probably more that side of me that comes up with the rugby. I do think strangely about the game. I think every now and then in a team model or a Fords meeting or whatever, I would think something and maybe my communication is not always the best, but I'd voice what I'm seeing and everybody would, it would kind of like go into the wind, you know, they'd just go on to the next point.

But we've gotten better at that because, you know, there's there's a lot of um space given to to bring ideas to the table and to discuss it and i think we're really grown as a group in that area but um so i do i do think about the game usually if i speak about uh my engineering brain or an industrial engineering brain it's uh i say like i i take very long to understand something but i feel like i try to get to a bit to a big picture understanding of things so i try to like over time you know get a deeper grasp and i think with some topics like i have a i have a deeper grasp than some people because i i try to kind of place it and then connect the dots the whole time so that's kind of the thinking the style of thinking that i have but when it's on the field i'm just like you know am i giving my best am i pushing hard enough it's not it's not always so much sticking going on when i'm on the field yeah you're known as an engineer with a big engine I mean every coach that coaches you probably have to pull you back a little bit and say you don't have to go 100% all the time you to me it wasn't surprising to know that you were a swimmer back in the day but you're not the best woman your family tell me who the best woman in your family is yeah so my sister she's actually traveled the world long before I started traveling the world with rugby because she swam for the for the she swam for south africa in the world down syndrome championships the world downstream swimming championships like in taiwan in italy and ireland in mexico so she went across the world for that and i made some friends and had a great time um she's a yeah she's a really good swimmer um and uh yeah my mom kind of got us both in in that in that direction early on and uh yeah it's been it's been good fun and i'm very proud of her she and my dad mostly does personal training at the gym now together so she's left swimming uh in the meantime but she kept the boyfriend that she met at the galas yeah yeah 18 years going strong maybe 19 now 19 years strong so no it's so wonderful and you can see how that would inspire you as well um so rito i know your story comes it's similar in the sense that you it's an unlikely story in some ways uh it's not the normal pathway um have i got this right that you literally your dad was more interested in your grades than than sports that's true that's true even um uh sort of swap schools he made me change schools because i'd focus too much on rugby so uh mva you'll know capricorn high school in polukwani So I probably after the 95 World Cup, you know, when everyone was so inspired to start playing rugby, that's how rugby sort of got into my system in Guiani. You know, so the 95 World Cup win and I convinced my mom and dad to take me to a rugby school. And the nearest one was Capricorn High School in Polukwani. and so I moved to the boarding school there and started playing rugby. Two years in, rugby was going good, but education wasn't going so good, you know, and my dad decided, no, he's going to bring me back to Guiani close to him, and so that's what happened.

I couldn't play rugby for three years in high school because I had to focus on my studies, so I started going to a school in Guiani. I actually went to two high schools. One was Keto Nungmalos High School, and he said, I'll take you there. If you improve your grade, I'll take you to the private school, which was called Kanyisa Education Center. So I went to Keto, improved my grades, and then it took me to a different, better sort of high school, Kanyisa Education, and that's where I matriculated.

You know, I'm looking at the two of you right there, and I'm already imagining the engineering firm of Shlingwani and Dixon. You guys are both meticulous in your own way. I was fascinated to read more about Guiani and the Shungan people, and it struck me that the history of the Shungan people is one of almost stubbornness in the sense that even the formation and where they were and where they were supposed to do and going towards what is now Mozambique, it's like people just taking different turns and saying, no, I'm going to stay here and you cannot bring me back and I'm going to do what I'm going to do. There's a bit of that in you probably is you took a harder road. This is not the easy road that you took to get on a bus and go all the way to Cape Town, find your way.

I think Nick Mallett was the one who finally said, I'm tired of you being late to practice because you have too many jobs. Let me give you some money and you could be a pro rugby player. How good is it now, though, to look at what you've done and are you the kind of person who's a bit, I don't know, just driven to do more or do you look at it now and can you have satisfaction in what you've achieved? Harry, when I sort of look back, the journey as well seems tough when you look back but there was a lot of enjoyment in that whole sort of process, you know. And I mean, you know, you mentioned in the beginning the the quantity surveying part trying to balance the two and i was fortunate early on as a junior qs i worked for a guy i called graham power and he'd instructed everyone uh the side that i work on that this guy has to leave work at three o'clock uh to go start training with the western province team so i was also very fortunate that i met some very nice people along the way that were keen to help me so with that process i started going to training and i was also fortunate i met a guy who was a conditioning coach he's coming back to us soon steph du toy um and and what stefan did is that every time i came late he actually took time to ask me and say hey man why why are you late you know and then i explained to him look i have to catch three texas i have to go home and change um and then i have to take a jog and eventually come to training and then he said to me he's like wow i didn't know that and i was glad he asked he said to me every time you come and you bid late you don't have to come report to me sliding at the back just come and join training sessions and i was quite fortunate that i met someone like that a couple of weeks months ago we had Bupa, Lukanyo Vukozela's story.

He had to catch a bus from half past four in Kailicha and change a couple of buses to get to, Rondeboj boys to get to school. And every time he got there late, he got punished. So he didn't, he wasn't lucky enough to have a person that actually asked him hey Bupa why are you late You know the teacher would probably just say hey why don you wake up early I like well if he woke up earlier it would have been three o Then he wouldn have had to sleep You know what I mean? So in my journey, Harry, I've been very fortunate that I met some very nice people along the way. And the more things happen, the more you want, you know what I mean?

The more you dream, you know. i always tell the guys and my kids that they need to dream big my dreams you know probably at one stage the biggest dream was just to go to johannesburg because joe berg who lived in guiana was maybe the way i would view new york now it was it was just you know a place that i couldn't really dream of being you know but that could have been my biggest dream at one stage but as life goes you learn to dream even bigger so yes i'm here uh the journey was tough and also nice at the same time but the nice thing about it you just learn to dream bigger and bigger so you you get beaten and you want more and more so i'm in a position now where i want more yeah it's it's the coaches bring more than just the words it's um it's something in the heart you know my best teachers in my life with coaches, a coach that wanted me to pray to completely Afrikaans change room. And I was bulking at it and I said, yeah, but I don't know if I can say exactly right. And I'm not sure I can pray properly in Afrikaans. And he said, yeah, you're shit, but that's not the problem.

What's the problem? And I said, I'm struggling to believe in God. And he said, ah, no, come to the farm this weekend. We're going to talk about God. And someone who took an interest in me uh ben jason i know that the the province stormers does this thing about where i'm from you know i was there in pe and and watched norman lakers incredible story i don't know much if it was true but uh do you sit there almost and you're learning about people that you might i mean would you and rito have ever become colleagues you know i don't know what it's funny to sit there and think that's such a dream that i'm getting to meet people from different places and we're really bonding together and know each other's story yes no i agree it's a really a massive privilege and i think that's why rugby is such a great vehicle um like at the start of my career i was i spent some time thinking like yes why why why do i play or what's my motivation and like one of the things that came i was like we have an opportunity to suffer together and that way you can form those bonds like you can be like a loving uh teammate slash friend to to to these guys that you meet in the in the industry so that's definitely one of the valuable things that connects you to people and even like um as you get part of the springbok alignment cab mixes or the friends that you still have from junior bog times like across across the different unions even your your competitors you know your friends you become friends with with them so and coach jruto is a pro that he has connections everywhere we travel we're gonna go traveling next week you probably know um a lot of people there we were heading in in uh belfast and goddorf but um no making friends and especially the teammates that you have it's one thing to see them every day at work and i think a lot of people have that when they're going to work but it's another thing to be forced to suffer together and to strive together to a common goal.

And those things really deepen the connections. Yeah, when we were trying to decide and Abbo and I were thinking about pairings, and I like the two of you together because to me you're both meticulous. Rito, you were telling me about a line-out both at HPC and Bellwell but also on the pitch at PE. The detail, the attention to detail is off the charts, next level. You know, you don't want someone just lifting the line out around the hamstring, this absurd part of the hamstring that you want the hand to be on.

And Ben Jason, obviously, you are someone who's studied, and it probably is good to have a coach that, you know, watched every single mall in the URC. You know, literally went back and watched it all, because now you can believe, as someone of science, that you can trust the game plan. Talk to me a little bit about that. you know the level of study that's going on in rugby right now it's you know when i was with you guys and watching the preparation it's so much more thinking now it's quizzes it's knowing scenarios it's it's not just going out and moving guys yeah i would say for me the the quantity surveying background probably really helps a lot um i remember you know you talked about teachers i i had this lecturer when i started studying at the cput he put a picture of a building and he said by the time you've done your degree i want you to see the skeleton in the building i want you to see more than just the bricks outside and and that stuck with me you know like when you look at a house when i look at a house now you know in my mind i'm thinking how many bricks it would have taken to put that together how many bags of cement so that that sort of detail in quantity surveying that forces you to look at every single small aspect that sort of is needed to put together house like how much hours would it have taken uh how many people to to put that house you know um how much concrete how much sand would have been that i feel for me really helps me in my coaching it sort of helps me break down every single detail you know i always tell the guys that i never come up with a line out calls or anything like that but my interest is to see where your fingers are when you're lifting you know where where your toes are pointing you know how can we get that extra 0.5 percent to make sure that we've got a an effective line out you know where is your weight when you're mulling you know where you're placing your stats so so for me i feel this quantity surveying background has really helped me in my coaching because that's the same sort of philosophy attention to detail looking at every single small detail and how it connects to the next detail and how ben jason's connection influences address connection around the back and I think you know to be successful in sport these days that's a level of detail you have to get to because everyone is studying you everyone is looking how at how you move how you jump and if you're gonna sit and just look at the big picture the whole time teams will eventually catch up so for me it's that you know challenging the players challenging you know you would have been in one of my meetings harry i probably took the list i rather ask questions i want to know what bj is thinking you know i want to make sure i'm measuring for understanding i want to know that the analyst that's sitting in my meeting he was paying attention two weeks ago when we spoke about the shift more i will ask him he's not even going to play but his answer might help and jason understand better so it becomes like an interactive collaborative environment where each single person in that meeting knows i could ask them a question and i know the way they will explain something might not be in the way that i could explain it so i create those scenarios so harry that bj's explanations might be able to help netling understand better his explanations might be better than mine i'm i'm very happy with it that i don't always have to be the one that gives the answer so yeah that's that's sort of how it works that's how i get to build that detail and get everyone to be on the same page yeah and that's that kind of meaning if you turn to bj to explain something to needling maybe bj brings out his guitar and sings a song and explains it well the interesting thing about bj there's been a few times joseph derby used to say bj's questions you heard his brain because he also comes from he's using his uh engineering background to make sense of it and sometimes we'll make a point in a meeting harry and then we're like oh okay bj we'll look at it we'll look into it because we don't really understand yet what is actually trying to get and three four weeks later we end up doing exactly what bj was mentioning four weeks ago so it's just that understanding of each other and how we take information so yeah bj's questions do sometimes um hurt my brains too but the nice thing about it he knows they're welcome they're very welcome in a meeting uh he's encouraged to ask because it makes us better bj but i'm going to defend you man i'm going to make an episode about understanding bj the the the brain of BJ.

I literally sat down at breakfast and guys like Amy Kahn, Conor Evans, they're talking about cars and girls and what to do. And BJ's asking me, but how do you know what you think you know? Wow. Philosophy over the voice. So BJ, the mall itself is interesting.

I watched one against Glasgow that you rolled and it was like seven different malls. It kept shifting and shaping the fulcrums changed there was shear there was you know forces through um you know and then you just have to keep picking yourself up adjusting your scrum cap and then and then running again but it occurred to me it's so different to experience that if you if you've been lifted and you're coming down back to earth and to you know you know you're you're going to get pincered in between two forces and then you're going to try to guide and swim versus you're one of the people trying to keep it going, you know, one more, or you're the one trying to kill it. I mean, literally your brain has to be completely different in those three scenarios. Took us through the morgues. I think a lot of people watch it on TV and it looks obvious.

But if you're in that, you know, sort of machine of hell, how do you know where you are and how to get out, where you're wrong, where you're going to infringe? Thank you so much for asking about the morgue. it's just like making my day if you're on the wrong side of them all it's like it's hellish it's not a good experience yeah if uh if there's a degree of contact dominance the mall is my favorite subject so it's really it's a it's a probably the lifting position as you come down and you're like you make contact with the first line of defense that's probably one of the one of the nicest positions to be in because you know they're going to eat you most of the time it's not a sack you know when you try to score five meters from the line it's not they try to like tackle you to the ground because it's risky for the defense they could concede a penalty for a late sack they're going to try smash you to the touch line so you know it's coming so it's like you kind of you try to initiate that and obviously sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't and then it's like a game of like working with your center of gravity as well as staying connected to your fellow teammates because it doesn't help you you get a gap and you through but you're you through alone and you break off doesn't really help so one thing i don't know if i can say about the bullying thing but one thing that we worked on this here is like you know just thinking around it in different ways and like as you this is everybody bringing an idea to the table and one of it is just like say you you are through a gap just to pull the guys along with you you know because you're connected to them you you don't have anybody that's pushing against you that moment so you can use all your force in in the right direction and i guess it's just like a feeling thing in that sense and more it's like this like you said it's like a machine of death it's connected parts it's an organism you know and we want to go forward but it's a lot of fun and you hear the ref say a lot of fun right and you hear the ref say say more right i mean you're almost hoping for those blessed words because now you know the defense is really in trouble yes yeah because everything is fractured um yeah i think there's so many moving parts there it's it's fascinating and obviously you are someone who um obviously has to be prepared i mean an engineering student knows that uh one of the famous scenes of you in bachland is it's your first it's your debut your mouth guard is in during anthems you're buttoned up you know you're ready to go and you've even you said honestly you talked about how sometimes you try to do too much you know um when you play it as a book um and although i will point out you've only your winning loss record at bachland is incredible so russie well you know just remember that um but the thing is like it's so much different to have all that preparation and then you're in it and the speed at which um the game actually flows must be uh absolutely mind-boggling the first few times you're playing at that level uh yes definitely um i think i've had so many times on the field and this is not specifically about the screenball games but just when you when you're on the field and you and you're struggling for for air and you're just like Like, yes, I just wish I prepared, like, slightly better, maybe. Or, like, could I do anything to feel slightly better? Because you do go through some tough times.

Coach Rita always speaks about dark places. But it really is an amazing experience. And it's an exhilarating experience. So you do everything that you can in the week to be prepared. But you know game day is a different beast But it really it so it high and you just do the best that you can in that moment rito i was privileged to be um present at a forward meeting right before the game against la rochelle and the quiet the quietness of gathering forwards uh no one speaking gathering the chairs i think efan rus was the one pulling the chairs into a circle and sitting down there was no obvious um starting point it's almost like people were breathing and just thinking about you know the good violence we're about to visit upon our visitors from france and uh it was striking because i think it's difficult to ask them and to go into battle go into things that will hurt and um and there's no excuses talk to me about that the quietness of it it's interesting to to get people focused instead of shouting banging things you know doing sort of the quintessential coach stuff you know instead you would like asking them to talk about what they think what they feel yeah look here we do sort of lots of different things when it comes to that forward meeting before games but the one common thing is that silence that quietness uh for about a minute or two before we start talking and i feel no one says keep quiet i don't get there and say keep quiet no other places keep quiet it's just a feeling that everyone gets that okay you know business is about to start now we're about to go to war probably the perfect time to start preparing yourself mentally and emotionally and yeah i get there and i sit and then there's that loud loud silence you know sometimes almost unbearable um and i think each person now gets an opportunity to really think about why they play the game what they're gonna do on this particular game coming up and the role how they're gonna perform their role and then i feel that silence really sort of gets you present you know it makes everyone present and then after that you know we'll talk about the line-up playing the scrum playing there has been a couple of times where i've really gone deep into the emotional side you know i'll get um letters from fathers you know like i'll ask ben jason's mom or dad to write him a letter and i'll read it in front of his teammates you know and when i asked the parents it was quite a an interesting exercise usually when i phone the dead you know the first thing i have to say is like everything is okay because maybe they're thinking there's been an injury at training and stuff and at that time it actually challenges me because now if i phone um brock harry's when was the place dead i he speaks english but i have to speak afrikaans adri smith's dead i have to speak to him in africa i'm like hello um kind of brother big i have to speak in afrikaans if i phone uh sassy's mom i have to speak in hosa to show you know just a little bit of that respect took some tunis i have to speak a bit of zulu and then i ask them to read to write the letter in the language they communicate to their signing you know because then i feel like the connection gets stronger and deeper so i'll be sitting in that circle i'll be You know, obviously I get the letter quite early in the week, so I train to read it.

I'll train to practice so I get the diction right, the rhythm and everything. And then, you know, after that silence, I'll be reading a two-page African letter or two-page Thosa, Joseph was Shangan, which made it quite easy I could read in Shangan. but it's you know that circle is a circle of connection uh of reminding ourselves that you know once we get onto that field it's just us nothing else matters we're playing for ourselves we're playing for our families so those those little circles work differently they they really help i think um but probably the most powerful thing is that first minute two minute of silence where you learn to to center yourself and be present i love that i mean coach i'm ready to hit somebody right now i'm gonna go on the street and just tackle somebody right now i'm gonna punch a cow uh also if you're calling brock harris's dad you probably have to speak really loudly because he's 100 years old um it's still quite young right quite vibrant uh I'm saying this because he might come find you if you watch this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm good.

I'm okay. DJ, you talk a lot about contact, your love of contact, and there's no way around it in the position that you've been born to play, shaped to play, and want to play, chose to play. You've got to be a contact merchant. Are you eating things, eyes wide open? How do you, that final step before you make contact, that delicious crunch into the ribs it makes them squeal what are you thinking about what do you try to apply into that just in terms of uh dynamics you know hitting hitting someone well i get it i get it wrong a lot but i guess you're exuberant you have a lot of exuberance yeah i guess if you if you um if you uh if i take it back i'll take it back to grade i don't know what grade two or grade three or something there was this big guy you and so shout out to you and um you and peters and he was like the big guy the um big guy in our in our team in training in in primary school and he would just like run and people really like be quite scared to tackle him i was like just the one it's so weird how you have these like singled out memories from from childhood where you don't keep a lot but that's one of those i'm like okay i'm just gonna dive in like and it went okay like actually i actually made lack of contact and i got over that fear and so it became a thing for me where like okay in primary school even it's like okay it's something that i do well and people like compliment you on it so i guess that's where those little identity things start early on in your life but um just dynamics wise i would say it's just to explode because you want to you want to eat somebody um at almost like the best uh where you've generated enough power and momentum to eat them on so if you're gonna punch you don't want to like you don't want to still be busy punching and then somebody hits you you want to like make contact like at a good level not at the very end of your um range but like close to the end of your range so i guess it's just it's easier with forwards that or with props that that you know they're just gonna carry straight so you can launch early enough and like try them at that end of range but uh you know when it's uh somebody like damien or or sasha you're not gonna get so i just sometimes just dive with the at their shins you know hopefully you you eat something odd there maybe it just it's a nice thing for me to think that it hurt them also afterwards so um yeah i always think that uh william say the guys is the guy who stops the best in rugby i mean full speed and then he can come to a stop he's like a bmw with those brakes his ability to change direction is amazing yeah so i do i do launch a lot of tackles i get some hard ones but i also miss uh probably slightly more than average tackles unfortunately so i'm trying to work on that but it's good fun but but the stormers stats if you look at tackles um far and away heading the league and probably the whole world of club rugby in the percentage of tackles that are dominant it's not leading you know you're not leading on completion percentages but that tells me something that you know that you're being told to aggression and game changer find a way to change the game make you know make your stamp on the game how good does it feel to get one of those tackle turnovers where you can you know really monster somebody and then you know paul or branis is going to be getting over the ball yeah it's a it's a great feeling and it's almost like you i did my job you did your job so it's definitely a awesome feeling and i think with the dominant tackles you know norman loves to to to um keep hammering on the point of uh double tackles you know so it's a lot better tag teaming against somebody to try to drive them back versus just the one-on-one and they might get a bit of a soft shoulder on you so i think it's something that i'm proud of from our group or always actually throughout the years we've had um fours mostly forwards backline players as well but mostly forwards that can that really can like eat somebody back can dominate the tackle and it's almost like as a group it just sucks you up yeah one of the one of the interests i noticed you wrote about in one of your interviews and you talked about dams and your interest in dams is something i'm obsessed with actually um building a dam before the dam the coffer dam the sur dam the diversion of water the impounding of water before you can actually you know create that dam it strikes me rito if you're looking for um a really good speech coming up just have bj talk about dams and apply it to the mall i'm not familiar actually that i've ever written about spoken about dams no i literally can prove it and it might be just one of those things where people ask you questions you pull out your ass but like that was what you came up with and i quote and i quote i like to walk in the forest and i like dams i think you were he was in resi i don't know what you were doing or smoking but uh those are the old days Rita you've had to do something that is difficult in the workplace you know in most workplaces you don't have your leaders of a certain portfolio go out for injury off and on you know J.

D. Schickling Ruben van Heerden I mean how do you manage a line out and keep it rolling with some of your actual you know line out captains in out so much yeah I think it goes back to the earlier point around around, you know, making sure that everyone is engaged in a meeting, everyone is learning, you know. When we discuss line outs, it's collaborative, everyone can ask a question. So I feel in those meetings, there's a lot of guys that are actually learning, you know. Marcel has put his hand up, he's been bugging me for months now, you know, he's like, I want to call a line out i want to call a line out in the match you know so he's quite hungry for that bj's funny enough school a lot of line outs when i've been coaching bj and i sort of got together from under 19 you know so he's he called a lot of line outs on the 19s and the 21s for me so i think there's enough uh intellect in the room uh enough experience to still carry on achieving high line out standards around calling um because you know the learning is sort of inclusive yeah absolutely and and i think that that flexibility of not making excuses um taking everything as a new opportunity so now marcel can step up uh is one of the things i saw when i was around you guys you know embedded and just watching is um people that i didn't really know are leaders are leaders um and that's brilliant you know that's something that you could never really pick up unless you were there um bj i know that there's something this is something i i definitely have seen you talk about uh someone caught you doing something good i think you were buying hamburgers for people and giving to them you said i think i i want to do good in secret i I don't want to broadcast it.

I'm not putting everything on inst, you know? I just do. And that's something that's my ethos. That's what I grew up believing in. I'm the same way.

I do good in secret so much that no one has ever seen it. But talk to me about that sort of humility and where that comes from. Is that from parents? Is that from your community? You know, where do you get that from?

Yeah, thanks for the question. I think the idea of doing good in secret is from the Bible. It's from Matthew 6, where Jesus says, like, don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing. And it's like, if you do something for the approval of people, you already have your reward. But if you do it for God to see you, like, he's in charge of the rewards.

It's also like, it builds your faith. Because then it's a personal relationship between you and God. So I would say that's also where my humility comes from. I'd say I'd give credit to God first, but also mentioned like my dad is a great example of being someone that doesn't seek attention. Someone that doesn't like, he really, he wants to show love and to impact people, but he doesn't, he doesn't, he doesn't, whenever it's about him, he tries to get out of the way a little bit.

So it's kind of a little bit from my dad. And then I would say also definitely from the experience of my faith. It's just like having experienced like that God reaches out and that he loves me personally. And that he almost like doesn't require me to reach a certain standard to have his love. Like he looks at me and he pleased with me wanting to please him And that was an experience that I had when I kind of like awakened in my faith early in in in high school and that just really it really formed me that god would like look at me and call me like acceptable and be pleased with me when i really was just busy messing up most of the time he just saw like a heart or god would look at your heart if you know i mean he wouldn't look at how while you're achieving and that i would say is something that set me up for that humility because i know i'm keen that someday it's a blessing and a curse but i'm keenly aware of all my shortcomings so that helps me also to stay on the ground yeah i remember thinking there was a point in my life when i was just about every inclination every thought i had was bad and i was trying to become a good man you know and i it helped me a lot to accept i accepted things as they were as as i am and also i didn't just do good when people did good to me if that makes sense you know i think that's what you're talking about is i'm going to commit to my railroad track of goodness and i'm going to do it even if you know it doesn't come back to me or maybe i think it's unfair um rita obviously one of the darkest hardest times recently occurred with chippy solomon's uh untimely passing and just a little nothing huge but just little chats with pearl his uh his wife it occurs to me how much um a guy like chippy did that no one knew about i mean so many things come out when someone is gone um some of the hardest 10 you know 10 days of the darkest times and also this explosion um that next week against glasgow where people were hugging a lot crying you know loving each other took so how do you ride that wave that must have been the most difficult time maybe as a coach yeah it was extremely tough harry i mean personally i i met chip when i was still a player 2004 he was my manager then you know um so he's been someone that's always been present sort of in my life um just when i still a student and grown now become a a sort of a partner with kids and stuff.

So he'd always been present. So last week was extremely tough, especially all of us have different relationships. Dion also met him when we were still quite young. Chippy is someone who was always involved with everything. You saw him all the time.

Before training, you see him because you need a jersey to train. after training you want to go get water or pirate, Chippy is there when you go to the airport, Chippy is the first person that you see, when you get into a bus, Chippy is the first person that's there, when you get out the bus, he's the last person to get out the bus, so he was someone that was present in our lives almost every time and every week, even now there's still a new that we're still trying to deal with that we're doing it without chippy you know the first week this week we open his office for the first time you know you still get that urge of oh let me go downstairs and have a chat with chippy you know um when you go get water you're reminded that chippy is not there tall we're going on to on monday he's not going to be there at the airport so that's going to be a first that's going to be a new thing that we'll have to deal with and i was sitting in the box before that Conard game and I was feeling a high level of guilt inside. I was feeling so guilty I couldn't deal with it. I'm like, how can we be letting the boys go play when I'm in this condition? I think the boys could be in the worst condition.

I was feeling quite guilty. I was feeling like, we should not have let the boys play because I know how much pain I was dealing with at the time and it was just too much. and then you look at the big screen when we're standing there you could see the boys are crying you get into the change room the boys are crying you know everyone's trying to console each other yeah it was really tough was really tough for me and i think it was really tough for the parents and maybe if you're not in the environment you do not understand the weight that was on us that day um that Saturday of the game and the week leading to that. The Saturday morning when we got a call that it passed on from Leonora, you go to his house and every time a player arrives or a colleague arrives, it's like you start again, you know, you start again to break down. When you see the pain in a player, you see the pain in his staff, the people that sort of work closely with him.

when Riffard, the SNC coach, arrived, he was shaking, crying. That was just like this volcano that just kept erupting. So that week, those two weeks were extremely tough, you know, and probably the toughest feeling for me was just more for the players, especially on that Connaught game because I felt like, geez, this is too much. Seeing Chibi's family get onto the field, everyone crying, and the first game without him when we got on the bus at the hotel the first his seat was open that was just too much for me to deal with and and all that weight came back to me and feeling like geez maybe we should not have let the guys play you know what i mean but um yeah it was extremely tough it's still tough now and i think we're slowly trying to move forward um but there's just so many reminders along the way because chippy was everywhere he was everywhere you know and he's the one guy that maybe the players were not never really got upset with if if i'm in a meeting and i'm telling bj he's not doing this well he can get annoyed with me when he gets to chip his office chip will trip him give him water and then he'll have a chat if there's a challenge in your life you go speak to Chippy. So he's left a massive, massive hole.

And, you know, we'd want to sort of make him happy from where he is now. But yeah, it was really difficult. And we slowly getting better and sort of dealing with it. Obviously, he seemed to me like the team father, and that people could go to him outside of rugby and speak of things that maybe you don't want to talk to your coach about. Dobbo, when I reached out and just said, how's it going right before the match, Dobbo sent me a picture of that empty chair, and it absolutely killed me.

I mean, I was bawling. Because I understood what that meant, that seat. Things like this can, I mean, obviously he's the ultimate servant leader, BJ. Obviously he tried to embody that. What do you do with that now going forward?

i mean obviously we would say what would chippy want well i mean obviously chippy was province through and through he'd want you to go out and do your best and let the chips fall where they may but so how do you how do you channel that nowadays one thing is to just appreciate the people and the relationships that you have uh to take a good care of of everybody else and also to realize that life is short so not to not to uh i think it was even the the week after the news of Uncle Chip is passing that the theme that we were speaking about was carpe diem is like seize the day is like to live today almost like you're not gonna get the next day so that's something that we even without like a little small group Bible study we were speaking about it like okay we don't have tomorrow so how are we gonna live today as if it's your last day so that's a good thought to have and uh just brings you back to just you know enjoying the day and making use of every opportunity with all the ups and downs here you are um rito you you're on top of the log you know you might not have drawn it up exactly how that went with conox in glasgow but it went the other way uh here you are 11 other teams want to be where you are. What's the way to finish this out and how do you see this thing wrapping up? How good do you feel your chances are of staying top? Yeah, look, I always talk to the players about preparing really well. And that's the one thing that we're in control of right now preparation our preparation how can we get better you know prepare for the worst case scenario when you do a line-outed training train it the standards must be so good because you're expecting to do it against the best contesting team in the world so when we train we're training like we're gonna play against the best team in the world we know We've taken all the best players in the world and put them in a team.

They have the best cohesion and everything. So that's our drive. That's our focus now to make sure we prepare really, really well. And that's the one thing we're in control of, the power of how we prepare and how we hold each other accountable. And I really feel, Harry, if we focus on that, we will eventually get what we really, really want.

And that's beautiful. coach Rita and Jason Dixon I cannot say how much a pleasure it's been I love this concept MV and I have been talking about bringing coaches and players together and show that partnership that doesn't always show itself on TV when you're watching a game the brotherhood the way you can share with each other absolute brilliant chats with you both of you guys and MV and I chuffed to have it thanks for having us Harry, it's really nice to have a chat with you guys as you know we're about to go on tour it's quite exciting but at the same time it's something that's also maybe a bit of a challenge for our families, we're going away for two weeks and stuff like that so hopefully when we're away they can watch this podcast and not miss us too much but yeah, in saying that I just want to say to all the players' wives you know that and the kids everyone that stays at home when we go work you know we really really appreciate them my partner joy at home the kids it's always tough when the dads leave you know um so yeah we we're very we're very lucky and fortunate that we have good partners good families that really support us but it's also important for me on this platform to actually also let them know that we really appreciate them we really appreciate them staying at home you know looking after families and all of that so we really appreciate them thank you guys for having us this was amazing um yeah agreed thank you so much area and mbn yeah and and bj i'm gonna ride my bike today on a dam i'm gonna think about you beside a dam hopefully on a dam is like can i just say something you talked about a challenge that my biggest challenge at moment is not to like you guys too much it's really you know the better i get to know the stormers no i'm at 49.9 percent that's the maximum i can't go over that i'm just telling you these two oaks impossible to dislike there's no way you know you're just you're fighting you're fighting the feeling envy give way to it surrender to it no yeah there's something there i mean something that was built when i was still in grade one as a wall that said they would come after you and were funny and you know nefarious things to make them like you make you like them and i've seen it now and i'm i'm i'm up to it i'm aware of it so but anyway he's in love i can feel it he's dying i can see it too no man no man no no no you're imagining it you're imagining it wait till you come back to lofters then i'm going to take you out for a beer or something both of you and i'll make sure that it's before the game so that you don't feel that well when you go on awesome thank you so much we loved it appreciate it thanks guys Thank you very much. This is the Lekker Rugby Pod. Only on Megaphone Rugby.

Thank you. Thank you.

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