LONG READ Asenathi Ntlabakanye: The 148kg 'Jozi Bulldozer' driven to prove size doesn't matter

Asenathi Ntlabakanye is used to being an outlier. Once weighing around 155kg, the Lions tighthead is colossal even by the frightening standards of the modern-day prop. With a bright red jersey stretched across his vast torso, Ntlabakanye does not look like the conventional professional rugby player. And so, for swathes of his career, he has been misunderstood and written off. Too big. Overweight. Not fit enough. A lyric from Rick Ross and Drake’s 2019 rap track Gold Roses became his motto: “I understand, they’ll never understand me.”

That line carries echoes from Ntlabakanye’s childhood. He grew up in Plettenberg Bay, a scenic waypoint along South Africa’s stunning Garden Route. Tourists in their rental cars park up for lunch or spend the night in a beachfront hotel. Great whites prowl the waters for seals. Prime golf courses pepper the coastline. Ntlabakanye’s neighbourhood was not immersed in this wealth. His father passed away when he was four, and he and his brother were raised by their remarkable mother and uncle.

The family matriarch was the driving force in all Ntlabakanye did. She encouraged him to take up rugby in primary school when the boy had little interest in the sport. Perhaps she noticed Ntlabakanye’s prodigious size. More likely, she saw what became of local kids who did not have a positive outlet for their energy.

“Where I grew up is kinda tough,” Ntlabakanye says. “You get exposed to… if you don’t do sport, you’re on the streets doing things you are not supposed to do. You’re drinking or smoking at a young age. I was protected from that and I was lucky enough to have a circle of friends, our parents were aligned in what they wanted. I’m still very close with those mates and their families.

“My mum forced me into rugby, to be honest. It’s a decision I don’t regret her making for me. I’m old enough now to see why my mum, uncle and brother did certain things at certain times. I don’t know how to thank them.”

I thought, why are you doing this? I would never say it straight to her face. In my culture if you dare to do that, you’ll get a bit of… you know what.

Ntlabakanye developed a lust for rugby. He revelled in its physicality and camaraderie. Soon, offers rolled in from prestigious high schools across the country. Ntlabakanye had his eye on a talent factory in Cape Town or George, close enough to home and culturally familiar. His mum had a different plan. She packed her son off to St Stithians College, a sprawling campus some 700 miles northeast in Johannesburg. She might as well have sent him to Mars.

“When it came to scholarships, she did a bit of research,” Ntlabakanye says. “St Stithians is not a traditional rugby school, they were trying to build up their rugby by getting a few scholarship boys in. For them, it was education then sport, not sport with education. That’s how she looked at it – rightly so. She said, ‘you’re going to go to Joburg by yourself and find your feet’.

“In the back of my mind I thought, why are you doing this? I would never say it straight to her face. In my culture if you dare to do that, you’ll get a bit of… you know what. I always give credit to her. She saw the whole picture.”

St Stithians was a prim and proper English-speaking school, a language Ntlabakanye had yet to learn. The lavish riches of his classmates’ families made the teenager wonder if he’d ever fit in – ‘I understand, they’ll never understand me’. There were times, during breaks in term, he would deliberately sleep in or find some kind of procrastination tactic, in the hope of missing his bus or his flight back to Johannesburg.

 

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“The only languages I spoke were my home languages, Xhosa and Afrikaans, because I’d gone to a primary school with mixed race and black kids. At St Stithians it’s expected of you to know English and write in English.

“I was going almost to a foreign place where no one understands you, no one gets you. The school was really wealthy. You start asking yourself questions: do I really belong here? Rugby was the only way I could communicate with the other kids. They got to understand, maybe this guy is not like us but he is different in his own way.

“It helped me to find a mate, Nicholas Brimacombe, and his family took me in and guided me throughout my high school career. If it wasn’t for them, I don’t think I would have stayed in Joburg much longer.  It was more of a shock to them than anything, but they were welcoming, they played a huge role in my learning the language. I would stay with the family over the weekends, I was forced to be around people to pick up English.

“It made me grow a lot as a person. You can throw anything at me today and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to handle it.”

The resilience his early school days fostered has been valuable. Rugby folk are quick to judge Ntlabakanye’s appearance, not his ability. The barbs gnawed at him and somewhere, in the deeper recesses of his mind, they continue to spur him on.

“I’d be lying if I said that doesn’t or didn’t drive me. When I arrived on the scene, people said ‘gee, can this guy do this?’ It was all about going out there and really showing people. What you see is not what you get.

“Now I know my body and what I can do, it’s about being comfortable with myself. With growth, it changed. A few years back I would read something and it would really be in my head. Now I’m in a different state of mind.”

Only in the past year has Ntlabakanye won widespread admiration from outside the Lions setup. His bulk catches the eye – of course it does – but he uses it well. He has beguiling footwork, deft hands and a love of whacking people. Sergeal Peterson, splatted across the Loftus sideline. Poor James Venter, galloping out of his own 5m zone, catapulted backwards as though shot by an elephant gun.

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Ntlabakanye’s tidy distribution has been on show early in the URC season and he scored a superb solo try in the Currie Cup semi-final, an extravagant step and bullocking run to the Cheetahs whitewash. He celebrated his 50^th franchise appearance in Sunday’s win at Dragons, and having boiled 7kg off his body mass, started all three of the Lions’ URC matches and played over 60 minutes in two of them.

“I really want to see what I can do at the lower weight. This season I’m much lighter than I was in the past two seasons. The highest I weighed last season was 155kg; this season I’m clocking in at 148kg. It’s a good drop. I’m feeling a lot better, moving a lot better. It’s something I want to keep working on and see where is the sweet spot for me. I think that would probably be around 140-142kg. I’ve never played senior rugby at that weight and I want to see what I can do. And I also think I can go much longer if I get to that weight, I’ll be able to finish games.”

The Lions are the URC’s great entertainers. They fillet teams on the Highveld, run them ragged with their devastating array of thoroughbreds. More than that, the franchise caters to unorthodox players, box-office runners and talent which often goes underappreciated or unheralded elsewhere in South Africa. Invariably, richer unions swoop each season for the pick of the bunch, but the Lions always seem to have a raw and burgeoning replacement.

“Any front-rower is no longer required just to scrum,” Ntlabakanye says. “You have to smash people. You have to shift the point of contact, have a certain skillset to contribute and I think my skillset is well suited to the Lions. We have x-factor backs and forwards who can move the ball and get around the park.”

Ivan van Rooyen, the Lions coach, did not always value Ntlabakanye. With Van Rooyen’s background as a strength and conditioning specialist, maybe it’s unsurprising he harboured some scepticism about an athlete so large.

“In the past, they misjudged what I’m capable of without even putting me out there,” Ntlabakanye says. “It was completely the same coaching staff. They now embrace what I can do for the team and for them.”

Ntlabakanye understands, people may never understand him. But he’s okay with that. He’s conquered his challenges and proven his worth.