“It was the old Ravenhill when I played there,” BJ Botha says without a hint of nostalgia, just a flat acknowledgement that the landscape – and architecture – of Irish rugby is changing constantly.
When Munster visited Belfast last Friday night, it was Botha's second time to return to the ground where he started his overseas career since swapping the Ulster colours for those of Munster in the spring of 2011.
Going back was at once familiar and completely strange.
“The new stadium is completely different and I think they are building a new support base there. But it is nice to go back to see the city. I like it there and go up there often to visit friends. Then there is the added situation of playing against my old countrymen.
“We socialise as well – some of them are godparents to my children. Then, on the field, you go harder at each other.”
It is difficult to believe Botha requires the added incentive of friendship and godfather ties in order to rouse himself to play his hardest. Granite robustness has been an enduring characteristic of an impeccable rugby career spanning 13 seasons.
Belfast and then Limerick has been home for the past five years and he has expressed the hope to remain with Munster after his contract expires in 2015.
The club strategists clearly see the South African as a vital element in Rob Penney’s ambitious reinvention of the team.
With his compact and immensely powerful frame, Botha’s reputation as a ferociously troublesome tighthead scrummager preceded him.
He has already voiced moderate reservations about the new scrum laws, lauding the intention to improve overall safety while pointing out that eliminating the momentum of the collision when the packs meet has proven a disadvantage to superior scrummagers.
Key figures
Nonetheless, a front row containing Botha is always going to have an advantage. He arrived in Munster at an interesting time, just as the club's European dominion was dimming.
As key figures like Ronan O’Gara and David Wallace disappear from the scene, the experience he can offer the younger pack members in this and future seasons is incalculable.
This season has been interrupted by injury – a medial ligament injury to his knee in a warm-up game against London Irish was the return of a problem that troubled him during his World Cup-winning year in 2007 and as a novice professional in 2001.
So his arrival at a 57th minute replacement against his old team-mates from Ulster last Friday night was timely. Munster need Botha healthy as they approach the pivotal games of their season.
When they arrived in Belfast last Thursday, a critical duty was to find a way to watch the Ronan O'Gara documentary being broadcast on RTÉ. You can't really 'get' RTÉ up North and after frantic web searching a stream was found. Botha grew up in a country teeming with rugby greats. The idols of his youth were never "position specific". If anything, he tended to emulate wingers as a kid and Naas Botha, his namesake and South Africa's revered fly-half of the 1980s. So he appreciated what was a starkly honest portrayal of O'Gara.
“Sport does funny things to people. And people don’t realise that when people make it to the top, it is staying there that is the tough part. The people who are remembered not only stay there, they make the difference when it is needed. And I think that is what guys like O’Gara are about. Paul O’Connell too.
"They are ice cool when they need to be. Not many have that. Because you can't prepare for that physically or mentally...when you have to kick a penalty in the dying seconds, you have to take yourself to another place. He speaks a lot about his instinct and always trusting it and backing himself. They deserve all the support and praise they get in Ireland.
Need heroes
"It provides heroes in a country that is trying to keep the sport strong. Youngsters need heroes to aspire to. That was always part of my upbringing."
Botha went to primary school in the famed Grey College in Bloemfontein. He was born in 1980 and so his childhood was spent in what was the last full decade of the apartheid regime. He is of the rare generation with a vivid understanding of what the ‘two’ South Africas felt like. When the Fifa World Cup took place in 2010, he was at home and saw the national team play against Uruguay and went around shouting for Bafana Bafana for the duration of the tournament. Those games and the jubilant atmosphere in the cities inevitably reminded him of the 1995 World Cup, when he was at the highly impressionable age of 15 and enthralled by rugby.
Igniting point
"That period was like an igniting point of my whole career. Particularly with professionalism just around the corner. I decided that I wanted to be there."
Like most South Africans scattered across the world, the news in early December of Nelson Mandela’s death was not surprising but still somehow startling and although he was thousands of miles away, he felt as close to his country as he ever did.
"I was privileged enough to meet him on a number of occasions and he was a big figure around the rugby. It was something that didn't happen suddenly and people realised this was going to happen, that he wasn't going to live forever and it was a matter of thanking him and carrying his legacy. He really did help to change South Africa, partly through sport and his humility. So for the past few months I was following the reports and it was always 'critical but stable', whatever that meant. And the day it happened it was very real. After everything that happened and the leaders of the world turning up. . .it made a big impression."
Mandela’s genius was to somehow simplify and make the idea of a post-apartheid South Africa manageable. As a young father, Botha is looking forward to seeing the country develop and progress ever further from the place it was when he was a child.
“You have to be optimistic. You see always the positives in that light. You see a lot of the negative parts but they come from people and groups that have emigrated and are comparing other countries to South Africa. It is bred in you. You guys see the wildlife, the sun, the sea, the beaches and the special people in South Africa and that is what makes it. It is a country that excels in a lot of ways.
“You look at those positives and you channel those. But there are negatives there. I would like to let my children know South Africa whenever that time comes.”
Irish twang
For now, though, the Bothas' children are immersed in Irish life and they are expecting a sister in the months ahead. South African friends tell the Bothas that they can definitely hear a brogue. "They've a bit of a.. I don't know what it is. An Irish twang," he says in an unblemished Afrikaans accent.
Botha’s affection for Limerick is obvious. “It was nice this morning,” he says loyally when asked about training in the awesome downpours and storms of recent weeks. When they met up this week following the defeat to Ulster, the squad had what was described as a frank discussion about the limp opening half hour in which they conceded 20 points without reply and the typically defiant response, when they pushed Ulster to the brink in the second half. On Tuesday, Rob Penney stressed that the side needed to improve on performance.
Nice competition
"We have played in patches," Botha agrees. "I think that is what Rob is emphasising – we have played great in patches but need to put teams away. We have had new combinations every two or three weeks which has worked for the squad and creates nice competition for places and gives us cover for injuries.
“But we are coming to that stage of the season now where we need continuity. We are aware of that. It is about putting in a good performance for a longer period and keeping the dips that teams will have in every game shorter.”
Every Saturday seems crucial and this is no different: a teatime kick-off against a deeply stung Gloucester team. Victory will keep Munster nicely on song for a place in the Heineken Cup quarter finals. But this competition is volatile. Botha has played on most of the venerable stadiums around the world but has never been to Kingsholm.
“They will be driven by things like supporters – especially at Kingsholm. I believe it is a special place. So they will come out playing for their lives and we need to step it up and bring our performance and our intensity . . . . Hopefully then the score will look after itself.”
