On 06 November 2012 Raymond Rhule will be 20 years old. Just a little over 130 days ago, 98 maybe 99 out of every 100 South African rugby fans would have been clueless if asked who Raymond Rhule was. He has since redefined the term ‘overnight success’.
The former HTS Louis Botha student was born in Accru, Ghana in 1992 and moved to South Africa with his parents in 1999. It was confirmed on Sunday, 28 October that he would be one of the new Boks chosen for the outbound tour to Ireland, Scotland and England later this month. It might well have been more of a surprise had he not been selected. The 2012 Currie Cup Premier Division leading try-scorer has captured the complete attention of Saffa audiences with his continuous good form.
Rhule’s track record before 2012 suggested that although he was a decent age-group rugga player, he was nothing to write home about. He played for the Free State Academy Week team in 2009, made the Free State Craven Week team in 2010 and played Free State under-19 rugby in 2011. He didn’t achieve any higher honours than this during these three seasons. This was certainly a far cry from the guy who now makes us sit up and take notice of his flashy individual brilliance.
His career started to swing around in 2012. Good form for Free State-U under -20 in the Varsity Cup Young Guns competition paved the way for a call up to the Shimlas (Free State University first team) and from there Rhule leaped to provincial Vodacom Cup action. His career was definitely on the rise but it still took a bit of good fortune to get to Raymond Rhule officially introduced to the South African rugby public. A few injuries had the Baby Bokke coaching staff pondering over who to call up. They took some good advice from SA under-20 captain William Small-Smith, who had actually played alongside Rhule in Free State under-18 teams during 2009 and 2010. Rhule was brought into the the Junior World Championship squad at the eleventh hour. The rest was not history just quite yet. What followed was a very poor and forgettable Baby Bokke defeat at the hands of Ireland. Rhule struggled along with his teammates. So the Raymond Rhule 130 + days story really only started on 17 June 2012 when the Baby Boks hosted Argentina in the semi-finals. Paul Jordaan limped off early on with an injury. Rhule replaced him and dotted down twice, introducing himself to thousands of fans in the process. From here he took off on one of the quickest ascensions to the top in SA professional rugby history.
Great that we have young talent coming through this season – WP showed this. Aussie in particular are very good at blooding younger player – hope he has the l;egs to last and is not a one season wonder.
Give him time. Maybe in 2-3 years time