LONG READ Marco van Staden: 'I was told my career was done, but everything happens for a reason'

Marco van Staden is something of a hoarder. Back home in the Gauteng province of South Africa, he has a collection of antiques, rows of model tractors, and even an assortment of bullet cartridges. A walk-in safe is stocked with neatly arranged hunting rifles.

Knives, though, are the Springbok flanker’s thing. Not for the damage they can do, but the craftmanship behind them. Some are researched and bought; others he makes himself in the kiln he built with his father. Van Staden jokes his wife, Chanel, wearily tolerates this hobby, so long as the knives are organised and locked away.

“No two knives are the same,” he says. “The story of what the blade is made of, what the handle is made of, how it’s been made – I like those stories.

 

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“There’s a knife show every year in Pretoria, all hand-made knives, and every year I go and have in my head the type of knife I’m looking for. I speak to the knife makers. There are so many.”

Van Staden’s most cherished blades chart the course of his adult life.

“I have a bayonetted one that came from my grandfather, which he got and passed on to me. My wife had one made for me before our wedding, and it has our Van Staden family crest on the sheath, with diamonds and blackbirds on the coat of arms. My dad made me a knife out of a 21 spanner for my 21^st birthday. He made it in the evenings when I was at university, then hid it when I came home at weekends. Those are very special to me.”

This profound love of creation and construction was ignited by Van Staden’s childhood. He calls those early days “a dream”, raised on the family farm surrounded by cousins, livestock and open land. His grandfather, Con, and father, Conrad, are mechanical engineers. Conrad’s workshop was always humming with the drone of machinery or the rhythmic pounding of a hammer. It became a hub for local farmers with bust equipment. The Van Stadens would baulk at the idea of calling in help to mend a vehicle.

If a car or tractor was broken, we fixed it ourselves. If we needed a trailer, we built it. When we built the house on the farm, we built it ourselves.

“They did everything themselves,” the Blue Bull says. “If a car or tractor was broken, we fixed it ourselves. If we needed a trailer, we built it. When we built the house on the farm, we built it ourselves.

“From age 11 or 12, every school holiday I used to work for my dad. I’d go and work in his workshop and learned how to use the machinery, and all the skills of working with your hands. Today, my garage is full of tools, always a project here or there.

“The farmers around our area, if something of theirs broke, they would bring it to us and we would fix it. We would make new machines from scratch, mostly for egg farms, making egg and tray washers. Still today, my dad is always busy because on a farm, everything breaks.”

Gradually, rugby became a more tangible goal. With a rural upbringing, Van Staden never attended a Bok-factory school. He was never close to playing in the great talent arms race of Craven Week. The University of Pretoria did not offer him a scholarship, so his parents paid the fees to enrol him there in full. Knowing how hard they worked further inspired Van Staden to seize his opportunity.

He went from Varsity Cup player to Springbok inside a year, with his ravenous jackaling and monster shots hurling him to the fore. He earned the fateful nickname ‘Eskom’ after South Africa’s notoriously errant energy provider. Van Staden, the line goes, hits so hard he puts your lights out.

Then there was the Leicester ordeal. As the game wheezed beneath the yoke of covid in 2021, and South African eyes looked north to Europe, Steve Borthwick brought him to Welford Road. Van Staden managed only eight games, sidelined by several concussions and marooned in a medical no man’s land.

At one stage, he was told his career was toast. He’d read the stories of former players enduring neurological decline in their middle age and the lawsuits they had raised against the game’s governing bodies. Leicester had no desire to play fast and loose with their player’s brain or leave themselves open to legal recourse.

“It was very confusing, very difficult,” Van Staden remembers. “I really enjoyed my time there and the type of rugby under coach Steve.

“I got the concussion, went down to London to see a specialist and he said I’m done, I can never play again. We decided to get a second opinion. The other specialist said the complete opposite. We were in between, we did all the tests to make sure I am fine and everything is safe. I passed all those tests and was given clearance to play again. Myself and Tigers just couldn’t come to an agreement. They just felt, I think, it was too high-risk for them.”

I was very confident and when I got the opportunity to play for the Bulls, I could just go all-out.

Van Staden kept training with Aled Walters, the renowned performance specialist who had been a central part of Rassie Erasmus’ Springbok revival. He watched on as Leicester claimed the English title. It was time to go home. Van Staden and Chanel returned to South Africa with no contract and no idea if he’d play another rugby match.

“We just said, if I get an opportunity to play, it’s for a reason. And if I never play again, it’s also fine.

“I was cleared by more specialists. I’d trained with Aled for six months without a symptom. I was very confident and when I got the opportunity to play for the Bulls, I could just go all-out.

“That was my hardest year, but when I look back now, I think it had the best outcome for me as a person and for our marriage. It made us a lot stronger, and we realised and appreciated what we had back home. The hardest year, but the most growth.”

Three South African winters on, Van Staden is a world champion, preparing for a second final in as many seasons with Jake White’s Bulls. The titans of Loftus have been here three times out of four since the URC’s inception, but have yet to clinch the silver.

Once again, they are pitted against Leinster. Another chapter scribed in the magnificent, festering grudge between Ireland and South Africa. The Bulls torpedoed Leinster before a horrified RDS in the 2022 semi-finals and downed them again in the asphyxiating Loftus air at the same stage last year. The latest edition will be staged at Croke Park, the spiritual home of Gaelic games in Ireland where rugby was once anathema. Far more significantly for the visitors, it takes place exactly a month after the passing of a brother. Cornal Hendricks, a heroic former Bull and Bok, with his effervescent generosity and zest for life, died suddenly on 14^th May.

“Our emotions are not under pressure,” Van Staden says. “It’s not that we have to win because it’s our third final, or that we have to lift the cup. It’s more playing with the spirit of Cornal.

We are there to enjoy playing for each other, playing for Cornal, playing for our families. That has a lot more meaning than a materialistic thing.

“We play rugby because we enjoy it. You speak to anyone who knew him, he would put a smile on their face. We just said to each other, the best thing we can do for him is to play in his spirit and enjoy the rugby.

“If we do all that right, we follow our plans and everyone is on the same page, the trophy will come as a bonus. We are there to enjoy playing for each other, playing for Cornal, playing for our families. That has a lot more meaning than a materialistic thing.”

Van Staden likens these epic times in the trenches to the unseen toil of the farmer. The quiet, nourishing glow of a job well done, in the fields or at the bottom of a ruck, is like catnip to him.

“When I’m at the end of a day on the farm, dirty and tired and covered in dust, if you worked hard and accomplished something, that’s a perfect day for me.

“It compares almost identically with rugby. The hard games, the games you had to grind out, and you sit afterwards with mud, sweat and blood, those are the most satisfying ones. You don’t remember the games you won by 50 or 70 points. It’s those one-point games you really had to work for. The work is the same and the ending with a beer is also the same.

“My grandfather and father always taught us, if you want something, you have to work hard for it.”

On the other side of the equator, amongst the knives and the tractors and the cartridges, Van Staden rears cattle, grows maize and runs a harvesting business with an old schoolfriend. He has two young daughters and at almost 30, a fair chunk of pro rugby ahead of him. There are no easy days, no room for slacking, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.