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FOOD FOR THOUGHT

DEFINE ‘UNLUCKY’

BY PETER STOFFBERG

ho would you rate as the greatest
rugby player of all time? Before
conducting some recent research,
I would have been quite clear on
W my choice, but now I’ve probably
changed my mind. SUNDAYS | 9h30
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He’s been called one of the greatest Springbok
rugby players. He’s been rated as ‘the best captain
of all time’. His career of 13 years spanned 109
tests and included four World Cups. He has been
part of teams that have won the under 21 World
Cup, the senior World Cup and two Tri-Nations
championships. Apart from captaining South Africa
37 times, he’s also the most capped centre in
Springbok history, and yet he’s been called the
unluckiest player of all time. Why?

It has nothing to do with his 13-year long career,
it is all about World Cups. In just five minutes of
his first ever test for South Africa, a knee injury
put an end to his hopes of playing in the 2003
World Cup. In 2007, he tore his biceps in the first
game of the tournament and missed the rest of
the competition, including the victorious final. In
2011, a rib injury in the opening game ruined that
tournament for him. A horrific knee dislocation in
2014 could have ended his career, but successful
reconstructive surgery (with artificial ligaments)
granted him one final World Cup campaign in
2015. Devastatingly, he was sent home in just the www.familychurch.online
second game after breaking his jaw - an injury PLEASE REGISTER FOR OUR ON SITE SERVICES
that did end his career.

Winning the A broken jaw may have been the end of his
World Cup is the career, but it wasn’t the end of adversity. Life
pinnacle of rugby is full of adversity, learning to overcome it is
achievement, precious, far more precious than any trophy, even
but it only takes the World Cup. So just how ‘unlucky’ was Jean
place every four de Villiers? It depends on how you look at it. His
years. You would endurance and character are qualities far greater
expect him to be than his physical strength, speed or ball skills,
deeply aggrieved, and they are what made him a truly great player.
perhaps even Maybe even the greatest. We can learn so much
bitter, but this from his example.
is what Jean de
Villiers had to Take some time to read Romans 5 in the Bible.
say about his run In it, God talks about our weaknesses, hardships
of injuries: “I still and disappointments, and His ability to turn these
believe if I had into opportunities. In His hands they become
not gone through opportunities to learn about His grace and to hope
those injuries, I in Him to overcome even our greatest adversities.
would not have That hope gives us an eternal advantage far
reached 100 more valuable than anything as temporary as
tests. I learned a tournament or even a career – and there’s
most of all how nothing unlucky about that.
to overcome
adversity.”

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