This being a rugby publication, it may seem puzzling that I feel compelled to write about Hansie Cronjé — a man who gained his fame, and subsequent infamy, in cricket whites far from the hurly-burly of the loose ruck and maul. What some of you may not know, however, is that Hansie was, before he finally nailed his sporting colours to the cricketing mast in his early twenties, a rugby player of some considerable renown.
A person of outstanding innate leadership ability, I was not surprised to learn that Cronjé skippered almost every schoolboy team he played for, including the unbeaten Grey First XV of 1987 — a precursor to the glorious Bok-laden Grey team of the following year.
"My informed sources tell me that Hansie played eighthman much in the loose, Bob Skinstad style — inspired, no doubt, by that other Old Grey no. 8, Morne du Plessis."
Grey College's unbeaten First XV won all their games, including a last-gasp 13–12 win over a Senekal side that contained a young Toks van der Linde in the final of the Administrator's Cup. Throughout this long but victorious season, Cronjé maintained the gritty but noble and gracious bearing that he was to display years later at his peak as captain of South Africa.
The story of the jacarandas at Maritzburg College is, frankly, one of the finest cricket-meets-rugby parables in South African sporting lore. Jackie McGlew, seated beneath those jacarandas watching a young JN Rhodes skipper the Maritzburg First XI, was asked whether the young prodigy might one day lead South Africa. "No," replied the ex-Bok skipper — "because that fellow over there will beat him to it." The opposing skipper was WJ Cronjé. The rest, as they say, is history — though perhaps not the kind anyone wanted.
Rugby Forum runs this piece not to revisit the cricketing tragedy that ended Hansie's career, but to remind readers that the man who galvanised South African sport in the 1990s was, first and foremost, a rugby man — a leader who understood the codes of honour and sacrifice that make Southern Hemisphere rugby so different from anything the Northern Hemisphere can produce.