Naas the rugby “great” to assist Eldoraigne

Naas Botha is trending in schoolboy rugby circles after it was made known that he would be the Director of Rugby at Eldoraigne in Pretoria.

From a marketing point of view, the announcement is already a resounding success as it places the name Eldoraigne in the limelight. That celebrity status coupled with the entertaining social personality of the iconic Bok is bound to go a long way to promoting the school in this regard.

However when it comes to rugby coaching, the jury will probably want to remain out for as long as possible on this one. Will the 65-year-old have the energy, the skillset or the staying power to steer Eldoraigne rugby in upward direction?

As it is Eldoraigne appear to be underachievers. That said things are not that easy in Pretoria these days with all the strong competition about and not having a boarding house compounds the challenges.

In 2015 Eldo’s decided to drop out of the Blue Bulls Macro schools A-section of the then Beeldtrofee competition. That move prompted more calls for the formation of a unified Noordvaal league, which now exists and since it came about Eldo’s have been relegated from the Plate to the Shield to the Bowl. So they are effectively three leagues below premier league now. They were mid-table in the Bowl (league-4) at the end of the 2023 season. The three schools that finished above them in the overall stakes, all got promoted to the Shield league as part of an expansion project. So if anything the Bowl league will be a weaker one in 2024, again working against Eldoraigne ambitions to attract better players, if this is part of the MO that gave rise to Naas’ appointment.

As for Naas, he has to be one of the all-time most memorable South African players. A man turned dictator on the field of play who took hoofing a leather Super Springbok rugby ball both out of hand or from a mount of sand to a new level. He set the bar so high it’s debatable whether any other Saffa has been able to match his excellence for a sustained period.

Like the great David Campese, Naas had a reputation for not ever tackling, in a time when the sport was still very forgiving to players who adopted this approach. He was also a pioneer of talking to the referee. Taboo in the 1980’s but now a common sight in modern day rugby.

Naas debuted for Northern Transvaal at the tender age of 19. These days, in spite of SA’s desperate shortage of quality depth in the self-same 10-jersey, unions are afraid to fast-track promising youngsters in the same way as the Blue Bulls did in 1977.

In 1983 Naas quite amateur rugby and pursued a career as a professional NLF American Football kicker. He’s gift for accurate place-kicking was reward by the Dallas Cowboys who signed him as a backup to a most reliable and injury free Rafael Septien. Consequently Naas didn’t get the big break he hoped for and by the time he left USA to return home, his biggest achievement had been to help the Dallas Harlequins rugby team to win their maiden national championship title.

In a different time when not much was known about Italian rugby in SA, Naas was pivotal in putting an Italian club by the name of Rovigo on the map in the late 1980’s. It would take until the year 2000 before Italian rugby was able to step out of the shadows and finally joined Europe’s elite as part of the Six Nations.

These days Naas is best known for his work as a rugby analyst on Supersport.