I had the opportunity to see Henry Oswald de Villiers play once, but being six years old at the time, I didn’t give two hoots about rugby back then.
I looked at everything except the action and the rugby legend, who died at the weekend at the age of 76. Stupid move.
Sports fans around the world often regret never getting the chance to watch the old greats of their game in action.
Who wouldn’t have wanted to see Joe Louis in the prize ring, or Babe Ruth in full swing, or Pele destroying nations on the soccer pitch, or HO de Villiers?
I actually got that chance, not that I knew it at the time. My mom had packed me off to go watch club rugby at Newlands with my dad, who was a keen supporter of Villagers, the team captained by De Villiers.
I was more impressed by the snow-covered Hottentots Holland in the distance, visible in the gap between the railway and north stands.
By the time I discovered my love for rugby and returned to the stadium in the autumn of 1979, the picturesque mountain range, even without snow at the time, was all I could remember.
De Villiers had hung up his boots by then, though he was still at the forefront of the game, coaching the Villagers first XV.
That season Villagers shared the WP league title with Maties and won the newly introduced knockout tournament, the Ohlssons Shield.
The next year De Villiers coached Villagers to victory at the national club championships in Durban.
HO is also a strongly built footballer. His ability to break tackles, shouldering through on the run is a tribute to his strength. He ducks and avoids high tackles like nobody can; but what is more HO can initiate a sudden new line of attack from a ducking stance.
— Sports writer Maxwell Price
He actually still played the occasional match for the reserve team of oldies, and the story goes that arriving for a fixture against Hamiltons, noticed two opposition teams warming up on different fields. HO asked his captain which team they were supposed to play and the skipper pointed to the one group. HO replied: “Hmm, I don’t like the look of them, let’s rather play the other team.” Which they did.
I learnt about HO the player through word of mouth and books. He had transformed the role of fullback, adding the sparkling facet of counter-attacker to the traditional defensive role.
He wasn’t blindingly quick, but he could step and possessed a vision on the field limited only to true rugby intellects. He also, apparently, could run with his body almost parallel to the ground, which helped him to slip tackles.
On defence he tackled like a Trojan, was solid under the high ball and regularly kicked long, relieving touch-finders (using the old heavy leather ball). Again, his intuition allowed him to position himself well.
Many people I spoke to rated him the greatest fullback of all time; one even told me he was the greatest ballplayer he’d ever watched.
De Villiers started out as a flyhalf and centre at junior school in Worcester, practising his ability to dodge and step his way through opposition teams.
At Dale College in King William’s Town a coach switched him to fullback, but that didn’t douse young HO’s attacking flair.
As a senior he made his mark playing for UCT early on.
Sports writer Maxwell Price wrote a wonderfully descriptive account of De Villiers, published in a book celebrating the centenary of Villagers.
“HO is also a strongly built footballer. His ability to break tackles, shouldering through on the run is a tribute to his strength. He ducks and avoids high tackles like nobody can; but what is more HO can initiate a sudden new line of attack from a ducking stance.
“He scored one of the greatest tries at Newlands recently, when playing fullback for UCT in their win against Potchefstroom University, he stole up from fullback, got a pass, ducked under some tackles, rose with a dummy, change of direction, sidestep and a headlong dash to the line ... and a try that had the crowd up on their feet roaring applause.”
De Villiers played 14 Tests for SA from 1967 to 1970, his international career being cut short by a terrible knee injury.
The All Blacks, after studying footage of SA’s tour of Britain in 1969 and 1970, had identified HO as one of the two danger men in the Bok backline, though he never got to play against the New Zealanders, the only major team he never faced.
Only his determination got him back onto a rugby field, using his own programme of mountain running.
De Villiers had lost pace, but none of his guile, and in 1973 he captained Villagers to a famous 3-0 victory over Maties, landing a penalty kick to claim the club’s first Grand Challenge trophy, WP’s most coveted prize, since 1958.
A massive photograph of De Villiers being carried aloft triumphantly on the shoulders of teammates at the end of that match was the centrepiece of the Villagers bar.
In 1975 De Villiers led Villagers, celebrating their centenary season, to a rare victory over Maties at their Coetzenburg fortress in Stellenbosch.
He was playing such good rugby in those years, while I was gazing at the wintry world beyond Newlands, that a fan launched a petition demanding HO be selected again for WP. HO, who I later learnt was totally down to earth, merely commented: “This is all very embarrassing.”
I once interviewed Bossie Clarke, a former WP wing and stalwart of the Villagers team in 1979 and 1980. A former Matie himself, Clarke rated Stellenbosch maestro Danie Craven as the best coach he’d ever played under. HO was second on his list.
De Villiers never rose as a coach beyond club level, but he still did great work at schools, mentoring Percy Montgomery, the fullback of the Bok side that captured the 2007 World Cup.
That was the first time I interviewed HO; the man on the other side of the telephone seemed almost too humble to be the legend he was.
I was keen to know what HO had done to make Percy so great, but he was at pains to point out that Montgomery’s greatness came from within.
“There was very little I could tell him. He’s very much a natural ... He was actually great to coach because he was never too big-deal to listen to a suggestion. I didn’t have to do a lot of coaching with him — he was a pure natural and dedicated as hell.”
HO’s qualities as a brilliant player and coach were matched only by his humility.
De Villiers seldom used to rave openly about the children he coached, but he spotted Montgomery’s talent straight away and he spoke about it openly.
I spoke to De Villiers a second time in 2011, having dropped off a book from a mutual friend at his complex in Cape Town. He wasn’t there, but he called me later to thank me, displaying the manners that my parents had tried to inculcate in my siblings and me.
The second occasion I interviewed HO was in 2020, for a piece on the death of Chris Burger 40 years earlier. Burger had been a central figure in the Villagers team coached by De Villiers.
Burger died on a Sunday morning, some 12 hours after suffering a broken neck in a Currie Cup match. Villagers were due to play Defence on the Monday, a public holiday.
De Villiers spoke about the raw emotion at the time, recalling that he wanted to pull the team out of the encounter. “I phoned [Burger’s widow] and she insisted that what Chris would have wanted was that we go ahead and play and win.”
Villagers, who had lost to Defence earlier in the season, ground out a narrow victory. “We won on sentiment and determination. There were some hard nuts in that team, but we were all very emotional,” HO recalled.
Not long after the interview he sent me a WhatsApp apologising for not giving me what he felt was enough information, even though he had provided me with exactly what the story needed.
HO’s qualities as a brilliant player and coach were matched only by his humility.
If there is a rugby Valhalla, there will be a seat reserved for him at the top table, though he’ll probably insist on sitting in a more modest perch.
Down here, without him, the snow on the Hottentots Holland is going to feel that much colder this winter.
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