BEN DU TOIT

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 160, 10 July 1939, Page 5

BEN DU TOIT

SPRINGBOK FORWARD PRODUCT OF STELLENBOSCH | INVERCARGILL HIS TURNING POINT One of the forwards the 1940 All Blacks will probably play against in South Africa is Ben du Toit, who is the present captain of Northern Transvaal. Too little was seen of him in New Zealand to judge his form, injuries keeping him out of the play 1 after the matches in Australia, but South African critics rated him the I best No. 8 forward they had. A noted New Zealand critic, J. G. McLean, of the New Zealand Observer, who saw the Springboks in Australia and in all their matches in New Zealand, also rated him very highly indeed. Many Gifts for the Game. So far as his Rugby brilliance is concerned, there have been a good many debates as to which of the mai.y qualities that nature has bestowed on him, have provided the chief contribution to his outstanding skill at the very specialistic type of play at which he is the master, writes J. Sacks in the Rand Daily Mail. Some say it is his exceptional speed that has been responsible. Others may put it down to the fact that he has been through that famous nursery of the game, Stellenbosch. Others may point to the fact that that wizard, that Merlin of Rugby football, A. F. Markotter, had a lot to do with his most impressionable days at that institution. It was Markotter who, with a wave of his walking stick, shooed down Du Toit from half-back to forward. But it is by no means far fetched to suggest that the higgest contribution to his success has been his mental alertness; his exceptionally sharp sense of observation; his quick, orderly mental o rcsp of an entire situation almost in a single glance. His other qualities have no doubt played their part. He has commandeered them to serve him on the football field, but the co-ordinating and directing force has been his exceptionally clear-cut power of observation. * I was very impressed by the repeated evidences that he gave of this during the New Zealand tour by the Springboks a couple of seasons ago. Whether he went to a meeting or on a sight-seeing tour, he could afterwards recount the incidents with a wealth of detail that was the envy of every journalist. Although he was handicapped by a severe injury to his spine in that gruelling mud-battle on the Sydney (cricket!) ground, where New South Wales inflicted a heavy defeat *n the Springboks, his talent blossomed out to the full on that tour of 1937. Prior to that—at the Cape and in the Transvaal—he had been a forward of outstanding promise. The tour converted the promise into an accomplished fact. For most of the tour he was just a spectator he sat out for twelve successive matches after the Sydney game. But all the time he was shrewdly taking in every move, working tactics out in his own mind.

A Case of Paralysis. He did not play in New Zealand until the South Africans reached the South Island. Then he played at Blenheim, a little gingerly after his illness; and he came off the field to be told by a doctor that he was lucky to have escaped paralysis; and that if he played again that scourge would be his only reward. But this theory was not a unanimous one among the medicos, and lot long afterwards Du Toit took his courage in his hands and turned out against Southland, then the holders of the Ranfurly Shield. Well, the doctor who had predicted paralysis was right. Only the paralysis was to be found among his opponents, when he got going. He made up for all his football holiday in that one game, electrifying his own team by his sensationalism in the loose. He acted almost like an extra ohreequarter, beating one, two, three and even four men in succession in order to work his wings clear for a velvet path to the goal line. That Southland game, played at Invercargill—which has a notorious reputation for feeding oysters to visiting teams prior to big Rugby games—w as the milestone in Du Toil’s career. He changed in that one match from possibility to fact, from a good, hard player I into a positively brilliant one. It was i there that he attained for the first ! time that tip-top peak that has given j him the reputation as a peerless flank I forward of the highest class. | Du Toit is the first to admit that in 1 his tenderfoot days as a senior forIward in the Stellenbosch side he was nervous to the point of being overawed. Always a keen student of the game, it seemed unbelievable to him that he was playing against such masters as Boy Louw, John Apsey and Mauritz Van den Berg. But familiarity soon bred the proverbial contempt. His confidence grew with every match. But it was only at Invercargill that he gave himself, Jjr the first time, the signal: “Full steam ahead.”