'Your body's sore all the time having small gaps between games'

It’s quite the Everest having young men play five matches in the space of 20 days at the Junior World Championship in South Africa. The start-to-finish southern hemisphere winter weather schedule is relentless when compared to the upcoming Rugby World Cup in autumnal France where Steve Borthwick’s England, for example, will play four pool matches in 28 days – a far more leisurely task than the title race currently unfolding in Cape Town.

Winning helps, though, and the effect it had on the Junior Springboks last Tuesday looked immense. As witnessed by RugbyPass, they walked down the inner sanctum of the Athlone Stadium tunnel all uptight pre-game, their draining nervous energy visible as they waited for the signal to head out for the national anthems ahead of their pool-deciding showdown versus Argentina.

About 100 minutes later, when they came back down the corridor to their dressing room, their strut was of a very different complexion after a morale-boosting 24-16 comeback win that qualified the hosts for this Sunday’s semi-final showdown with Ireland.

Their joy was unconfined. The South African players whooped it up as they went about their post-game celebrations, but it wouldn’t have taken long for the focus to shift and the emphasis to fall on doing what was necessary for them to quickly regain rude health and be ready to tackle the Irish.

“It’s usually just recovery or just go to rehab in the gym, otherwise sleep is a good recovery as well,” explained fly-half Jean Smith to RugbyPass. “It’s very tough to have small gaps between games, your body is sore all the time. That is why recovery is very important in this narrow space. We just focus a lot on recovery and not being on the (training) field too long.

Junior Springboks and Argentina come back down the tunnel after their epic battle in Athlone. #WorldRugbyU20s pic.twitter.com/Hiyj4mWCsi

— RugbyPass (@RugbyPass) July 4, 2023

“You can feel the energy of the people just being there, the noise they make,” he added about the advantage of being the host nation that now expects the backing of an increased five-figure attendance at their last-four match after the excitement of their late-game flourish electrified the fans that had gone along to watch on Tuesday night. “It lifts us up, gives you energy and gives you that extra goosebump just when you are busy playing the sport that you love.

“It’s very exciting. We’re just focused on our plan, what we want to do in this competition, what we want to prove as rugby players and as a group. There is a lot to prove but we don’t put that extra pressure on ourselves but because we are young boys, we are still enjoying these games.”

And each other’s company, it seems. “A guy that stands out at being very funny is Imad Khan, he has got a great personality, makes the guys always smile just with small things he does and says. And a guy who had to bring that seriousness a bit is Paul de Villiers, the captain. He has a great personality, is a great person to talk to, but because he is the captain, he brings the leadership.”

A 20-year-old son of Franco, the ex-Springboks fly-half who is now head coach at Glasgow Warriors, Smith was engaging company when RugbyPass caught up with him at the Junior Springboks’ Southern Sun hotel located adjacent to the now shut and decaying rugby stadium at Newlands.

It is accommodation the Junior Springboks have shared over the course of the tournament with pool rivals Argentina and the first-floor communal area was lively when Smith pulled up a couch adjacent to the stairs to chat amenably while a number of Argentine players potted balls with a noisy clatter on the nearby pool table.

Currently on a junior contract at the Sharks, Smith has demonstrated an encouraging level of maturity in extricating the Boks from trouble in their matches against Georgia and the Argentinians. He was rested for the mid-pool game versus Italy, the country where he was born in 2003 and whom he could well have been representing at this U20s tournament given his roots.

Smith’s father played and coached in Treviso during his son’s formative years, and it was where he first began to play. “I started playing rugby at five years old. We weren’t supposed to. At that time the first guys that can play were only six-year-olds, but luckily my dad talked to some people so I could play rugby at five.

“I was born in Treviso into a rugby family, and it started off from there – from day one I had a rugby ball in my hand,” he said, going on to explain what this overseas upbringing gave him when the family moved back to South Africa a decade ago with dad getting involved with coaching the Cheetahs. “It taught us a little bit of something else. South African people are not used to the cultural difference.

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“At school in Italy, you start from eight (in the morning) until four in the afternoon and you only train at clubs unlike here in South Africa where you go to school sports. There are no school sports in Italy – you go straight to club rugby and so at night you train from five to seven, two hours, train there and come back, sleep and then go back to school the next day from eight ’til four.

“It was very long school days and some schools in Italy also have school on Saturday, so the culture difference on that was a bit different. But when we came back when my dad got a job here, he put us in South African schools and just having rugby at school made it different because when you have a break in school you play rugby, and they don’t have that in Italy.

“So the mindset of South Africans is rugby the whole time which helped me develop as well because I started thinking more about rugby and how to improve. Just putting you in that rugby environment made you grow more than the Italians do because they have a club system and you only speak rugby at the club and that is two hours a day while in South Africa it is five, six hours a day, even more after school.”

Smith can still speak fluent Italian. “Yes, I can. Our home language was Afrikaans. We only did Italian in school. At home, we did Afrikaans and we watched TV in English, so that is why I also developed my English. When we came back my dad wanted us to learn more of the Afrikaans language, so we did that at school but after a while, me and my brother struggled a bit so we went to the English part of the school and did that for the last three years of high school.”

Asked what he missed the most from his European upbringing, he added: “The quality of the pasta and the pizza. There is a lot of scenery that South Africa doesn’t have that Italy does but the other way around, South Africa has the scenery that Italy doesn’t have. It’s more like a 50/50. I won’t say I am focused on just the one, I love both countries.”

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The legacy of the pandemic lockdown was Smith becoming a more skilled player to ensure he was ready for the Junior Springboks’ call. “At the start it was a bit rough not playing rugby, not knowing if you were going to be playing rugby, but it did teach me to work more on myself,” he explained.

“During the lockdown we stayed in the estate so I had the opportunity to develop my left foot, to better my skill on that side so I can use it in the game at the moment So if there is an opportunity to go on the left side and use my left foot, that is something I learned during lockdown in Bloemfontein.”

What else does he bring to the fight? “I’m 89kgs, so that is a decent weight. I might aim for 90 to 92; that’s a good fighting weight, and I’m 181cms in height. I’m not going to grow more. My height is pretty decent for a rugby player at fly-half and I’m at a decent weight. It can get a bit better with strength but that will come throughout the years, so I am still trying to build that muscle mass. But I’m not below average, I’m at a good place at the moment.”

He likes the gym, believing it to be a useful exercise to “be in your own mindset and build yourself”. Of help is the artist NF: “He is a Christan rapper, so I listen to his music.

“I have progressed. Last year was more my learning year, this year I have decided to start putting that into my rugby and started building myself up step by step. I have learned a lot from rugby and the different ways to look at it. I’m still developing, still growing and taking it day by day. I have developed a lot.”

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Franco has been a huge help. “My dad is the best coach to go to. He knows what coaches think and see so he helps you develop the game from a player’s point of view as well as a coach’s point of view and how the rugby game changes with new rules. It helps a lot to have a father that can help you develop quicker.

“There are small things, especially on the attack, that I need to work on, otherwise he is mostly happy. He just wants me to build and build and focus on what is next. At home, our small quote is ‘next job’.

“As soon as you are done with this job, like if you make a mistake, it’s straight into the next job, what are you going to do to make it better, what are you going to do to improve. Because rugby is so much in our DNA in our family, we have a passion for it and that passion just grows more and more if you talk rugby.”

Smith hopes that this talk will one day ultimately be about his representing the Springboks at Test level. “That would mean a lot to me because I have been working hard.

“It is something every boy dreams of when you are young, so becoming something you always dream about would be a big accomplishment if that happens somewhere down the line,” he said, going on to explain the No10 stars of the sport that have influenced him. There is also the value he places on his trademark kicking with the Junior Boks.

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“Someone’s game that I really like is Dan Carter. It has been said he was the best No10 in the world and he is someone I look up to. I also like watching Johnny Sexton and the way he plays. Jonny Wilkinson. They all have a specific type of game they want to play and I just take small tips off everyone and use that to try and improve my game.

“If you actually look at it, the team that kicks the most is actually the team that wins. It is difficult to explain that but if you win, you need territory gain and the easy way to get that territory game is through kicks.

“It’s not something everyone always understands but it is something you have to do to make your team win. It’s not something you block out, but it is something you just do. You always play to make the team better, to make the team win so the kicking and territory are everything in the game to us.”