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'They felt it would be best to amputate my leg' - Bobby de Wee and the 'shark attack'

Bobby de Wee (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

Bobby de Wee likes to tell people that the vivid scar running from his left hip to his knee is the legacy of a childhood shark attack. For a solid five minutes, he regaled his new Ealing team-mates with stories of the seagoing beast that took a chunk out of his leg.

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Eventually, the ruse collapsed and de Wee melted into the impish smile and booming guffaws that pepper his dialogue.

This immeasurably tall tale is a source of laughter now, but concealed beneath the mirth lurks profound trauma. At fourteen years old, de Wee lay in a South African hospital listening to doctors tell him that his leg would be amputated. A bacterial infection was snaking through the limb, poisoning tissue, devouring flesh and rotting the boy from the inside.

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For any teenager – let alone one hell-bent on making it in professional rugby – the sheer paralysing terror of this prognosis is impossible to imagine. And all the more unfathomable that the infection was contracted in a schoolboy match from a particularly arid spot of sun-blistered pitch.

“After the game, I had a grass burn, and it felt like I had a bit of a dead leg,” the lock tells RugbyPass. “This continued for about three days. I told my mum and dad, went to the doctor, and he said it was just a rugby injury that would be fine if I rubbed some ointment on it.

“Eventually I went in for a sonar and they saw that I had staphylococcus, a type of flesh-eating bacteria, in my system. Because it was on my left side, where the heart is, it had a gangrene-like effect where it spread throughout my body. They felt it would be best to amputate my leg.

“They told my father it was best to just go in and operate, and if we were in there beyond a certain amount of time, my father would know that they’d had to amputate. The doctor managed to save my leg, albeit I have a very long scar, and I was bed-ridden for three months or so. I lost a lot of muscle mass, I had to learn to walk again, and it brought my family very close.”

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The horror never dimmed de Wee’s thirst to play. Indeed, it had precisely the opposite effect.
“My dad asked if I still wanted to play rugby. I said to him, ‘It’s Grant Khomo week next year’. He took me through a vigorous training programme, and I ended up making the Grant Khomo team.

“I’d say a bit of the fire was ignited: you know what, I can actually make a career out of this. Subsequently, Heyneke Meyer drafted me to the Bulls up in the Pretoria. That’s where it all started for me.”

De Wee’s life has been riddled with distressing episodes. At 13, his parents divorced. A year later came the scourge of staphylococcus, and by the time he was 20, the Bulls had cast him into the wilderness. He missed a vast swathe of rugby after seriously damaging his shoulder, then last September, his dear Southern Kings went bust and plunged the contract-less squad into a state of panic.
Growing up in Klerksdorp, a town of tough industry and tougher people, de Wee learned to smithereen the obstacles in his midst.

“We aren’t one of the wealthiest families; we can’t compare to the high rollers of this world,” he says. “But my parents always did everything in their power to make sure if we needed or wanted something, that if we work hard, we can have it.

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“One of the biggest driving forces to make it rugby is to give them financial security. I don’t want to use the words ‘if it’s in our budget’ to my future children, I want them to understand that if you work for something, you will achieve it.

“I’ve been able to say to my dad, ‘Here’s some money for you to do this project, or finish that building’. My parents know that if they are in a bit of financial trouble, they can come to me and I can help them, and they can send my brother to varsity.”

Worcester Warriors <a href=
Bobby de Wee Ealing” width=”1920″ height=”1080″ /> Bobby de Wee of Southern Kings tackles Stuart McCloskey of Ulster. (Photo By Oliver McVeigh/Sportsfile via Getty Images)

While de Wee saved wisely, the coffers have run barren in Port Elizabeth. The demise of the Kings brought a grim end to a franchise that had operated in ramshackle fashion for years. It also dealt a hammer-blow to the region that consistently produces wonderful talent, particularly from its large black community.

The Kings team had few of the resources that professional clubs take for granted. They were repeatedly and inevitably stripped of their foremost players. The turmoil brought the squad fiercely close.
“Something that resonates in all the players that I’ve encountered at the Kings is that we’re all hungry for success,” de Wee says. “A lot of the guys came from a bigger union where they maybe didn’t get the exposure or game time and are hungry to prove themselves.

“When all that happened, the rug pulled from under your feet, a lot of them started stressing. The timing just sucked. A bunch of us had said no to contracts at other clubs, who had then done all their recruitment and spent their budgets.

“I had said no to Edinburgh, because I always said that I didn’t see the Kings as a stepping stone, I wanted to play 100 games for them. I always felt we had tremendous potential to become a powerhouse and I wanted to be at the forefront when it all happened. I’ll take losing for two or three years if it means I see my name up in lights someday as the player who stuck through it all.”

That dream was never fulfilled, but perhaps de Wee can still forge a slice of rugby history. The Trailfinders are hugely ambitious, astutely run and lusting to win promotion to the Premiership.

De Wee arrived in England in mid-December, self-isolated, and spent Christmas alone in his flat. His mother wept down the phone when he called home during the festivities. He used his enforced solitude to mediate and think deeply about how he had neglected life beyond the ‘rugby bubble’. He reached out to jilted old girlfriends and began seriously contemplating life after retirement. When he got down to business, he was staggered by what he found.

“Having known what Ealing’s ambitions were, I saw a lot of the Kings in them when I previously joined them. I saw an opportunity like that and I took it.

“I was super impressed when I arrived. I knew I’d signed for a Championship team, and to my own detriment, I arrived with my eyes a bit big. I thought, jeez, these guys have a 4G pitch. The gym – you really want to get me excited, take me to your gym – I saw in there they had branded benches, they had GPS systems, a nutritionist, everything. I have never experienced this.

“These guys are serious. We started training and it was a shock to me, the level these guys train at. I said to my friends back in South Africa, just based on the way Ealing are training, they would give a couple of teams in South Africa a good hiding.

“And to be honest, I couldn’t keep up with them. I am usually someone who prides himself on his fitness, and we had done a kicking drill, I looked to side and the prop Kyle White was running in front of me. Flipping hell, is this the level I’m at right now?!”

Ten months had passed since de Wee’s last game when he rumbled out at Trailfinders Sports Club and helped Ealing claim the scalp of Saracens, a result that resonated across English rugby.

It may not have been a wartime league tussle, and Mark McCall may not have fielded all of his rock stars, but the contest felt like a significant moment and de Wee played all 80 minutes of it.

Facing Billy Vunipola and Vincent Koch, he found the drive to keep grinding, keep bludgeoning in the throes of exhaustion.

“I can’t even keep up with the guys in training and you are throwing me into the deep end, not against a semi-pro team, but against Saracens,” he says. “I just felt like a deer in headlights.

“But I told myself, when I’m down, and I feel like stopping, I’m just going to remember everything that I’ve been through to get here.

Saracens
Billy Vunipola /Getty

“It went relatively well. Obviously, I made a couple of mistakes, but I felt that it wasn’t too bad a game for my first after ten months. Not exactly where I want to be, but a lot better than I hoped I would go. And it’s difficult not to enjoy the game based on the brand of rugby that Ealing play.”

Beyond the obvious quest for promotion, there is a greater purpose to de Wee’s toil. He yearns to succeed for personal fulfilment and to shape a better life for his parents, but he also wants to leave a lasting footprint back home.

“For a coloured boy, there were no rugby players who made it from Klerksdorp, so there wasn’t someone I looked up to,” de Wee says.

“I saw that as an opportunity to be the first guy, I can give hope to another Bobby that could be dreaming of playing professionally but because no-one else has done it he can’t believe that he can do it.

“I might not be an Eben Etzebeth or a Beast Mtawarira, but I want to live out my talents so that some kid watching me knows that it’s possible for him to do the same.”

Role model, raconteur, staphylococcus survivor – Bobby de Wee bears the scars of his trying past, but in the here and now, he has made himself a vibrant inspiration.

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J
JW 15 minutes ago
Can Les Bleus avoid a Black-wash in New Zealand?

-last season was a RWC season, which always means more games

I didn’t look at every (in fact I only looked at NZ lol) body but it actually means less games

(especially the Munster ones)

Yes quite noticeable, and that if Leinster and Toulouse are a mirror, didn’t the Toulousian stars still have higher minutes?

Could Doris’ last longer season have an impact on his injury

Good question, he had 1383 from 19 through till that point. No idea what his injury was but that’s a good amount of minutes again, his replacement had 5 more URC matches following the injury, you could predict 5-600 more minutes on top (another full load). I’d say yes it could and no it probably didn’t lol

looked at the ones that had the highest figures. The numbers in the season before and the one after are usually different.

Yes and it would be very easy to check thanks to that great site (just middle mouse every player). Certainly I noted the ones in Lions are less. Maybe that is planned as they have 5 or so more games yet but could indeed be seasonal. It just too hard to know imo and taking a basic average is enough. I suppose they have 10 more Lions games from the point of that data and if you expect them to share minutes thats 5x1200 added, making a season ending 23 likely totalling 42k minutes, much higher than the previous years.

If players are tired with no gas, get injured and miss half of the next season, that’s not a good input for a game

Yeah totally, that is a holistic season to season picture though, we are talking about a single key tour during a 4 WC cycle.

players from the C team were.. or are injured … so that quite conveniently lowers the bar, while still being unrealistic, as they would not tour anyway

Yes I have brought up that point myself too, it could have been much different, as it’s only “Unrealistic” judging by the example Galthie set in his selections. Who numbers, maybe he had some theoretical/imaginary marker where he said “if I can get enough players to cross this point, I’ll risk selecting my best available to try and win” but because too many became unavailable he decided it wasn’t worth it/couldn’t reach the quality he thought needed to win, so decide to go development instead.

347 Go to comments
T
TT 49 minutes ago
Jason Ryan unpacks selection changes and their future impact

AB forward pack solidifying & experimenting nicely. Yes need all combinations, including back ups, tested & solidified asap.


The backline's down the other end of the spectrum, from 9 back ups to wings is all up in the air. Mainly because to many have been given too many chances to prove themselves for too long, ie while NZ other backline riches languish… or move to Japan, eg the 1 thing that has to be stopped, if it can, is NZ's most powerful centre, & exactly what ABs need, move to Japan, ie Peter Umaga-Jensen.


Add backline talent like Fakatava, D.McKenzie (permanently), Josh Jacomb, Tavatavanaw, Q.Tupaea, again Peter Umaga-Jensen, Billy Proctor, AJ Lam, Narawa, Tangitau, Naholo


This is the AB squad & team to win every future test, including the next RWC.


Order in preference /{1st pick}/ [ONJ=Once Not Injured ] / (back up)


1 {De Groot} [ONJ - Williams, Tu’ungafasi] Ollie Norris


2 { Taylor } Taukei’aho [ONJ - Aumua]


3 {Tosi} [ONJ - Lomax ] (Newell )


4,5 Locks {[ONJ - S.Barrett], Holland, Tuipulotu }, ( Vaa’i , Antonio Shalfoon, Isaia Walker-Leawere, [ONJ - Oliver Haig] )


6,7,8 Loose forwards { A.Savea, [ONJ - Lakai, Sititi], Finau, Kirifi } (Christian Lio-Willie, Vaa’i )


9 {Roigard } Ratima (Fakatava)


10 {D.McK} B.Barrett (Josh Jacomb)


12 {Tavatavanawai} Q.Tupaea (Billy Proctor)


13 { Peter Umaga-Jensen} Billy Proctor (AJ Lam)


11, 14 { W.Jordan, Narawa } [ONJ - Tangitau, Naholo] (Reece , C.Clarke)


15 {J.Barrett} B.Barrett (Love)

2 Go to comments
J
JW 1 hour ago
Can Les Bleus avoid a Black-wash in New Zealand?

Common now, I checked, and I have also seen your replies to Graham just now. You know the AB tests rated higher. A ‘Friendly’! You know they go back in history even further, right?


So I can’t believe you are correct when you say it brings in the money. I can understand though playing better nations than those in the 6N but which don’t have a profile (like how Argentina is still a hard rate in NZ even after years of high performance), don’t generate the same interest as Wales etc. You’re also not going to have a SA or a NZ touring every November, and Wallabies are no longer the benchmark.


I mean I wouldn’t doubt that the most obvious revenue factor is a 6N component, not trying to say that it isn’t, just that fans show that it needn’t be. November test should still generate a high amount of revenue. As a topic it is all redundant now as the November tests (and July) are going to have a competitive factor.


Hopefully the quality of nations continue to rise and you can have three blockbuster teams touring every year in the not too distant future. 10 or 11 games might be right around the perfect number for a minimum tier 1 test nation too. I’m sure you’re going to make the rest of your season fit around that (those aren’t 100% things at all).


So although WR have already implemented change, I do still agree with your opinion that things are pretty good as they are. I only see a little improvement needed before France can really step up to All Blacks or Springbok level. You might think that a joke and that you will always look up to these teams but as a nation you really can do/go one better.

347 Go to comments
J
JW 1 hour ago
Can Les Bleus avoid a Black-wash in New Zealand?

It was a reply to both your posts sorry, I mean stuff you replied to NB about only focusing on 6N and hoping that.. narrowness will benefit a WC campaign.


I think WCs are harder to win than that (requires many factors other than being able to play the best winning rugby), and 5 matches that aren’t must win and are broken up is not a good test (especially compared what the All Blacks offered).

I’m fully aware that French International players participation into Top 14, European Cups & 6 Nations will hinder their preparation for a WC.

So I wasn’t saying suggesting that. Your competitions are fine, they just aren’t going to provide everything.


Interesting insight on the last campaign, and again, those components they’re adding are also practical and sensible attempts to improve their chances at a WC. So they question remains, why go to those lengths and throw it all away by not picking a better team to travel to New Zealand?


I’ve suggested in other topics they are really close to making it work, but also the data that’s been presented in this articles shows that even now they could have also made the tour to NZ work.


That is both in the view as presented here by NB and what other players were available, and in the long term planning that you say Galthie has undertaken, in not taking the opportunity to make it work even better (factors like the dates of these tests could have seen finalists available from test 1) for a tour like this.


TBH, I can understand if Galthie made a calculated decision to undervalue the tour. Many have had a bad opinion about the All Blacks ability/level under Foster, and even in test 1 he might have shown such an attitude to be correct still under Razor.

347 Go to comments
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