When we were kings

In a month or so where dropped passes will be called disasters, missed kicks labelled catastrophes and defeats likened to tragedies, the stories of Joost Van der Westhuizen and former Springbok team-mates puts things in perspective, explains Ciaran Cronin.

IT STARTED with a shake in his left hand. It was nothing major, a small tremble, the inevitable result of a career putting the body on the line as a professional rugby player. Or so Joost van der Westhuizen thought. He first noticed the problem last December but it wasn’t until May that the former South African scrum-half thought anything of it. On holiday with his two kids, seven-year-old Jordan and five-year-old Kylie, at the Sun City resort near Johannesburg, he lost an arm wrestle to an old doctor friend of his, the kind of friend he would never have lost an arm wrestle to before. The next day, in the pool, Van der Westhuizen told the doctor about the peculiar way his left-hand had been feeling, and indeed acting, of late. He was sent for tests and within days of being examined, the former Springbok scrum-half was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease (MND).

“It’s easy for people to say just be positive and forget about it,” Van der Westhuizen said at the time. “But when you shave every morning and you cut yourself and when you lie in bed and see your arm but can’t move it, it’s on your mind all the time.”