By Kaleigh de Jager
Three Maties Rugby players – Oliver Reid, Samuel Badenhorst and Danie Kruger – were in the 2026 Junior Springbok team that became back-to-back world champions this July. A fourth Matie, Riley Norton, was originally captain for the Junior Boks in the build-up to the tournament in Georgia, but a call-up to play for the Senior Springboks against the Barbarians meant that he missed the tournament.
Beyond the Junior Springboks, Reid won a scrum penalty on his South Africa (SA) “A” bow against Zimbabwe and Kruger was summoned to a 51-man Springbok training camp.
The players share their experience, while Maties Head of Rugby, Drikus Hancke, shares the considerations behind the Maties Rugby development programme.
The call-up
“I was hunting on the farm when I got the call. The voice on the other end said, ‘Hello, it’s Coach Charles from the Springboks.’ But the signal was very bad – I couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying, so I was convinced it was one of my mates in Dagbreek prank calling me,” Kruger said.
It was only when the caller, unbothered by his scepticism, asked why he did not want to take the call that it dawned on him. “So when the coach said, ‘You don’t want to take my call right now?’ I realised, oh, this might be real,” Kruger said.
“He asked, ‘Where are you now?’ I replied, ‘I’m on the farm in the Free State.’ Coach said, ‘Okay, you’re coming to Joburg tomorrow – pack your things.’”
Kruger, in his second year studying BAcc, remembers it well. “The legends are actually so nice – that made me feel right at home. Imagine sitting at a breakfast table and chatting to Eben [Etzebeth]. It was like I was living in a dream.”
Reid, a second-year student studying BCom (Management Sciences) focusing on Financial Management, remembers the call coming through after hours of trying not to get his hopes up.
His call-up hinged partly on the Bulls’ fortunes: had they reached the United Rugby Championship (URC) final, their players would have been unavailable for Spring-bok selection, opening up extra spots in the squad.
Reid said, “My Junior Bok coach, Kevin Foote, called me on the Wednesday and said, ‘Olly, you might have a chance to get called up if the Bulls get through to the URC final.’”
He watched the final with his parents in Cape Town. “I don’t support the Bulls – I play for the Stormers – but I was really cheering them on that night. At about 22:30, I was in bed, and I hadn’t heard from anyone, so I thought maybe it wasn’t going to happen. Then I got the call,” he said. “I ran into my parents’ room and there was a lot of crying and hugging – it was a very special moment for my family.”
On the field
For Kruger and Badenhorst, the Junior World Championship finals 16–5 victory against France in Georgia defined their year.
“In the moment, the win was mind-blowing, but looking back, the best moment was definitely the final whistle – running onto the field, surrounded by my brothers who’d sacrificed trainings, time, and being with their families just to achieve a goal and make South Africa proud,” Kruger said. “The relationships I built with the people there were so special.”
Badenhorst attributes the team’s resilience to something less tangible than skill. “I always felt like we would win. I don’t know if it sounds cocky, but our team was really special – you could feel there was a love for each other, so the guys would play their hearts out for each other,” he said. “It didn’t matter if we were 10 or 20 points behind, I’d never stress. I always believed we’d be able to come back.”
For Reid, the two weeks training alongside the senior Springboks reshaped his outlook entirely. “Seeing players work so hard towards their dreams and sacrificing for their country really put a passion in me – that’s motivated me to work harder,” he said. “Having 50-cap Boks and very experienced Springboks in that team made me feel so comfortable to express myself and play with a lot of heart.”
Getting the ball rolling
Four Maties Rugby players wearing national colours is not a coincidence, and it is not new. This is the product of a pipeline that started long before any of these players ever ran out at Coetzenburg, said Hancke.
“It starts with recruitment,” Hancke said. “We obviously try and recruit top student athletes, top rugby players that want to become student athletes.” Unlike a professional union signing a prospect straight out of school, Maties is recruiting against a narrower pool: players who can make the grade academically as well as physically. “Our target group is more difficult, I would say, than professional unions, because they have to be able to be students and they have to academically qualify.”
From there, recruits enter the Young Guns (U20) programme, where conditioning and skills are monitored on an individual development pathway. Players are moved up through Varsity Cup, the Super League A, and University Sport South Africa (USSA) competitions as they show they are ready.
“Players that have high potential will be fast-tracked,” Hancke said. “They will move into the senior squads earlier,” where training intensity, gym work, and conditioning requirements step up sharply, on a calendar that runs almost year-round: pre-season from mid-October, Varsity Cup from mid-February to mid-April, provincial and league rugby through winter, a USSA campaign in July, and barely two weeks of true off-season before it starts again.
Academic integration
Academic support is built into that calendar rather than added on afterward, and it’s the hinge on which the whole model turns. “We will make sure that they get the academic support, if they have to go on tours, they can write their tests, and to monitor their academics closely to ensure that they still do well and pass,” Hancke said.
Maties, in his framing, isn’t a rival to the professional pathway so much as a deliberate feeder into it – one built to holistically develop players rather than condition them. “They are developed a bit differently than a player that goes directly to a United Rugby Championship (URC) franchise,” he said. “They become very good leaders in these teams because they are educated.”
Hancke goes on to say, “If you look at the Varsity Cup matches, nobody else fills a stadium with 17 000 students. So that feeling that you get, it does carry an impression. I think you also get oriented for bigger matches earlier at Stellenbosch University because we play in front of bigger crowds, and they are all very supportive.”
He is equally blunt about the facilities, “You cannot match our facilities in South Africa in a university environment. I almost want to say, at all.”
Trials and tribulations
“You see it all over the place, rugby players that put all their eggs in one basket, and then it sometimes can get taken away from you that quickly with an injury,” said Reid.
Norton also has experience with injuries. He picked up a hamstring injury at Springbok alignment camp. “It’s a contact game,” he said. “You’re not sure what could happen and what will happen and what won’t happen… I want to try and make sure that I try and get the degree and have a backup.”
For Kruger, while injury is a major risk, another concern is keeping up with academics. “I now have to catch up on six months of academic work on my own,” he said, “and we’ll definitely have to rely on the help of some lecturers to make this impossible task possible.”
Based at Elsenburg, which collaborates with Maties, Badenhorst is in his second year studying BAgric with a focal area in Cellar Technology. “I come from a family of winemakers and I just thought if I do go study, I might as well study something I’m going to use in the future.” He goes on to say, “At Elsenburg, they give me a lot of leniency towards missing classes and practicals.”
Norton and Reid describe near-identical weeks built around whatever is left over once training ends. Norton can spend five to seven hours a day at the Stormers between rehab, gym work, treatment and physio, then turns to assignments “in the evenings”.
Reid is up at quarter to six for two training sessions and a gym block that runs past midday, relies on teammates studying the same modules to send him notes from lectures he’s missed, then squeezes in study sessions at the library in the afternoon.
For the players, this is not a sacrifice, but rather discipline carried over from the field. “It’s a privilege to be studying, and it’s a privilege to be at Maties,” Reid said, describing how he talks himself back into the books after a heavy session. Norton said that it’s the same mindset he took from Springbok alignment camp into lecture halls. “Sometimes you can get overwhelmed, but it’s too much to start somewhere – you must make sure that whatever you’re doing now, you’re giving your full effort to it.”
None of this is a new discovery for Die Matie. A search through Die Matie’s archive turns up a headline from 25 years ago, in an edition marking a different generation of Maties players stepping up to the green and gold: “Maties maak ‘Baby Boks’ groot.” (Maties raise ‘Baby Boks.’) Eight and a half decades into this publication’s history, the machine Hancke describes is still doing exactly what that 2001 headline said it did – and, this year, doing it for four players at once.
