The Ireland team room is in an annexe near the elevators on the sixth floor of the Sandton Sun Hotel. The only signage to indicate that the area is off-limits is the word “private”; a second clue is a hotel employee or two that stand sentinel to dissuade the curious, day and night.
Players come and go but one that lingers a little longer around the entrance is Josh van der Flier, who invariably strikes up a conversation with the hotel employees. He’s been asking them to teach him a little of their language so he can greet them in the same.
The first thing he learned, inadvertently, was that there are 11 languages spoken in South Africa: Afrikaans, English, Xhosa, Zulu, Pedi, Tswana, Sotho, Tsonga, Swati, Venda and Ndebele. He discovered this fact because he greeted someone in Xhosa to be told that they spoke Tswana. His vocabulary across the disparate languages is improving.
That misunderstanding is something of a role reversal as on arrival last week the 31-year-old smiled that “one of the hotel staff started speaking Afrikaans to me. It takes a while to explain that I’m actually Irish.”
It’s a long-running meme on X (formerly Twitter), laying claim to his nationality as South African. The Wicklow native admitted that he has been asked about it, the odd time back in Ireland, “but more because they’re seeing the meme of it and thinking, ‘he must be South African’. I put something on Twitter there a couple of weeks ago and all the comments were like, ‘you’re coming home!’
“I suppose it’s the Dutch surname [his grandparents came to work in Ireland in the 1950s] and the rugby, everyone kind of makes the assumption.” There’s one final aside to his heritage. During a television interview, he was asked to name team-mates based on a little background information. The final question was, “who is known as the Dutch disciple”?
He laughed and said, “me” before going on to recount that it was slipped on to his Wikipedia page by his cousin, Mark, ages ago in the hope that one day it would be used in an interview. For the record, it’s still there, suggesting that he’s known under that moniker in Leinster. Shout out to Mark.
Luggage, player bingo and leaving certs - Ireland in South Africa
His first experiences in South Africa were on a school tour with Wesley College in 2009. The reward for taking a pummelling physically in the matches, one of which they won, was to attend the British and Irish Lions game against the Emerging Springboks. He met Zane Kirchner that day, the South African later became a team-mate at Leinster.
He played for the Ireland under-20s at the Junior World Championship in South Africa and against the Southern Kings in Port Elizabeth and Cheetahs in Bloemfontein with Leinster back in the Pro14 days, before experiencing disappointment in the URC semi-final defeat to the Bulls at Loftus Versfeld, a stadium to which he returns for Saturday’s first Test between South Africa and Ireland.
The Bulls game reinforced the physical tariff that South African sides impose. Van der Flier said: “The physical confrontation stuff you’d expect in rugby, they’re good physically but then they’re tactically very organised in terms of the game plan. They were happy to kick the ball.
“I don’t know how with the new coaching set-up [with the Springboks], whether they’ll play similar to that or not, but certainly with the Bulls you had to be very tactically smart in terms of when you play and when you don’t play.
“There are some learnings in that for us, but it’s hard to tell. We got a bit of an insight from the Wales game, but it’s new coaches [Tony Brown and Jerry Flannery] in for them; we’ll be ready for anything.”
Van der Flier gleaned some insight into the Springbok mindset around the testosterone-fuelled collisions from their former head coach Jacques Nienaber, now with Leinster. “One thing I’ve kind of noticed from talking to South African players, and even Jacques, it’s definitely very personal.
“They try and make it personal in terms of confrontation, it’s a way of motivating [them]; they’re very passionate about playing for their country. I think a lot of it is what you see. It’s very much a physical test, who is man enough to take you on one-on-one? There’s definitely a lot of that in their psyche.”
Before travelling out to South Africa with Ireland, Van der Flier resolved to reconcile his feelings about the disappointment endured with Leinster in losing the Champions Cup final to Toulouse and the URC semi-final to the Bulls.
He has a coping mechanism. “One thing that I try and do is to try to [frame] it in such a way, ‘did I do everything that I could to prepare for it [the match]? Did I try as hard as I could? Leading into the game was I as ready as I could be? Yeah, I was. Did I try as hard as I could?’ Yeah, I might have made a load of mistakes, but I can be happy with that and try and move on. That is how I would go about it. It is tough. You put the Leinster season behind you, and it is nice to be in a new environment and everyone’s in good form and looking ahead to Saturday; it’s exciting.”
There’s a temptation to talk about noisy vessels when it comes to the affronts or peeves that several Springboks have regurgitated in the build-up to the match, taking umbrage at perceived Irish disrespect but Van der Flier is nonplussed. He is linear in his focus, the only thing that he reads is the opposition team sheet.
He hears bits and pieces which he finds amusing, drawing a parallel from another sport in referring to soccer manager José Mourinho and the mind games in which he indulged. Sledging on the pitch is not part of their armoury but the Springboks are not averse to a bit of grappling as Van der Flier explained: “I have never experienced anything too negative. If you chat to them or if there is anything, like say when someone feels it is a slightly late challenge or shot, they grab you and have a few words. There’s definitely that bit of edge. The physical and confrontational nature of it, it [a match] can often be highly [charged], particularly when South Africa are playing different teams, you see a few more of the push-and-shove moments.”
So can he offer a layman’s guide to what it’s like to be physically assaulted by South African behemoths at the breakdown? “It’s a good question, they are like any team of their quality, if they win the first collision, if we don’t get a good tackle, you are already retreating and trying to compete at a breakdown where they are moving forward, and hitting you back.
“It’s momentum thing. The way South Africa play is that they’ll receive a kick, someone will carry the ball, and if they make a few yards, you have big, heavy bodies running on to the ball. That’s how they play, they get on top of you and it’s hard to get momentum back.
“It can feel like they are really on top of you then. The key to it is to win the first collision, or win a collision, then you’re back in, you have time to get off the line and put pressure on them again. It’s not letting them get into that position [of dominance at the breakdown].”
On the flip side of the ball, footwork is crucial in trying to engineer soft shoulders, as the euphemism goes, to pick apart the defensive seams or being able to challenge them with multiple choice passing options. He said that against some teams there is a benefit to running straight and hard but that you’d have to choose carefully when opting for that ploy against the Springboks.
“Some of their players are very physical, good in big collisions so there’s no point in holding on to the ball and running straight at them, when they know that’s your only option. The trick is definitely having options, whether you can use footwork, a handoff, play a pass, having that bit of variety or choice. I wouldn’t be the biggest of forwards, so I need something other than running straight.”
Kwagga Smith has beaten Evan Roos to the South African number eight jersey. Van der Flier is not surprised. “He’s a brilliant player, I rate him very highly. I remember seeing him play for the Barbarians, and it was one of the best performances I have seen from a backrow.
“He has got everything, he is good over the ball, a really good ball carrier, good skills, he is always very confrontational as well. I can see why they have picked him.”
Smith embodies the essence of the Springbok threat that Ireland faces today, but the visitors have risen to commensurate challenges in the past, in New Zealand and Marseilles. It’s a tough task in any language but then the “local boy” speaks a few and might just be able to help his team-mates come up with the answer.
