“En ons kom! En ons kom! En ons kom!” William Rose and Liam Kloosman were on my shoulder, mimicking my cricket bowling action and shouting translations of my words from English (“We are coming!”) to Afrikaans (“En ons kom!”). It was half-time at the LC De Villiers Sportsgrounds in Pretoria against the CUT Ixias, and we were playing brilliantly. This is one of my most vivid memories from the 2021 “Bubble Year”.
We had been excellent the week before against Shimlas and wanted to keep the volume up for the campaign. We thought we were the stronger team going into the match, but historically, UCT has gone too easy on opponents we should truly put away. I told the team how happy I was about the Shimlas performance—how fired up I was to see us get off to a great start and keep scoring tries throughout the match without letting them claw their way back in.

At half-time of the Shimlas match, Rethabile Louw couldn't stop smiling. A Shimla had just got a red card for making a head-high shot on him. Fortunately for us, there are few men harder than Rethabile Louw and he was happy to have scored two lovely tries in that first half. Alongside his name on the scoresheet were Connor Evans and Athi Gazi. Remarkably, Evardi Boshoff made the last pass in all four tries. Four assists in one half of the match—that was when he properly arrived for UCT.
Evardi is from Lichtenburg in the North West, and I remember trying to sell the UCT vision to him months before on a WhatsApp call. I would speak English, and he would respond in Afrikaans. He wouldn't say that English is his strong point either, but he had no problem finding the players at the end of each pass. His hard running lines and ability to offload in the tackle were special. I wasn't surprised to hear the Free State Cheetahs offered him a professional contract to join them in Bloemfontein after the Varsity Cup.
The second half was equally brutal. David Hayes came off the bench in his first game for the Ikeys and immediately went on a tear for 50 metres up the field before unleashing Athi Gazi for his second try. Hayes then scored, and Evardi dotted down too after running another brave line.
A Shimla then received a second red card for a dangerous collision with Niel Otto. We properly got under their skins that game and forced them to make many mistakes. We won 59–5 against a team that would reach the semi-finals in the two following years and then win the Varsity Cup in 2024.
We were becoming the noisy neighbours of the bubble. We were loud and made a spectacle of ourselves because we'd have these check-ins every morning. For 31 days, we were in the bubble, and on 30 of those days, we had morning check-ins. They became a highlight of the day.
We’d break the squad into two groups after breakfast in the dining hall and ask seriously: “Where are you out of ten?” Then, less seriously: “What's the funniest thing you've ever done for money?” or “What's your biggest fashion faux pas?” The stuff these guys came up with was hilarious. Seeing these young men in the weirdest circumstances hanging out with each other and loving it is such a great memory for me.
I'd then see William Rose walking around the Pretoria campus with a speaker on his shoulder. He's a loud and chirpy character on and off the field and would piss everyone else off. Scrum-halves are a different breed, I guess. I loved having William on my team, but I'd feel differently about him if he played for any other team.
William and Liam both grew up on the Strand and attended Bishops—a potent combination. William operated on the edge on the field and in life and was loved by the team—fiercely loyal and a genius at making people welcome when new to the club. Liam had a softer side with a wonderful charm and some serious talent. First impressions last, and having guys like this in the team who were always so warm to everyone from the outset was something I valued.

That week, ahead of the CUT Ixias match, I told the team the story about Fire in Babylon. It's an exceptional cricket documentary about the rise of the West Indies cricket team during the 1970s and 1980s. There's a lot to love about their story: their defiance against colonial oppression, their resilience as the most under-resourced team in Test cricket, and their unprecedentedly aggressive bowling attack that came over after over at full speed from both ends. Whatever resistance you put up against them, they just kept coming.
Fire in Babylon was fitting for that time of the season. I didn't want us to get complacent and I wanted to light a fire beneath them. It was our second game of the second bubble, and while we had won our previous games against Maties, Wits, UJ, and then Shimlas, we were only starting to execute our game plan the way we wanted.
Like the West Indies, we wanted to, proverbially at least, bowl pace from both ends all day, with no respite. Like the West Indies, we were clear on our strategy. Like the West Indies, we felt we had a deep purpose in what we were doing. Whatever resistance you put up against us, we kept coming and coming.
I wanted our game model to become a reality—the model that we wanted to be associated with was relentless energy, not intermittent energy. Pep Lijnders, assistant coach to Jürgen Klopp at Liverpool, spoke about “intensity being our identity” and that was something we’d repeat often. I shared a video clip of him explaining this in a team meeting and it landed, resonating with what we were all trying to achieve.
Our next match against the CUT Ixias was nothing short of spectacular. We dominated from start to finish, scoring 12 tries and winning 76–5. William Rose set the tone early with an opening try, and fullback Athi Gazi was unstoppable, running in a hat-trick. By half-time, we were up 42–0, and the boys were buzzing.
Our attack was relentless, but what pleased me most was our defensive effort. We shut down their advances time and again, forcing errors and capitalising on every opportunity. Even when we were reduced to 13 men due to a red card to Rihaz Fredericks and a yellow to Louw for high tackles, the team held firm. It was a statement game that pushed us clear at the top of the Varsity Cup table and signalled our intent as title contenders.
What made the victory sweeter was knowing that CUT had been one of the stingiest defences in the competition, conceding just seven tries in four matches before facing us. To put 76 points past them was a testament to our game plan's effectiveness and the players' commitment to the "intensity is our identity" mantra.
Funnily enough, the theme for the week wasn’t called Fire in Babylon, it was Tighten the Laws, as that was the call from the English press to stop the West Indies’ fast bowling dominance. The name for the theme was sparked by the two Shimlas red cards they received the week before and we were cheekily saying that they couldn’t handle us. But now, Rihaz “Razzle” Fredericks, was the one in the dock after his red card, but we all felt the referee and Television Match Official got that decision horribly wrong.
Ahead of the hearing, I reached out to someone with a bit of experience in these circles and his response is something along the lines of, “It was clearly the wrong call so you just go there, plead your case and you’ll be fine. He’s likely to escape a sanction.” So we got all dressed up for this Zoom call and as we joined the call, I saw that Herbert Mayosi, a former Ikey Tigers Club Captain, as the judicial officer.
Herbie’s first question is “How do you plead?” and we said, “Guilty” as we wanted to kick up as little of a fuss as possible. Herbie was astonished. We didn’t realise that pleading guilty was an automatic suspension and nothing we could say after that would avoid the suspension. Razzle got a one-game ban, which wasn't too bad in the end, but still frustrating as his tackle was fair.
It was a bit of a comedy of errors on my part as our forwards coach, Josh Carew, was with us and he’s a lawyer, but I didn’t consult him. So it didn’t make sense why I went into this hearing based on some back-of-the-napkin advice—I should have done my homework. Anyway, I learned my lesson, and I did apologize to Razzle.
That whole campaign inside the bio-bubble was so unusual, which made my memories of that time so vivid. There was a lot to be proud of in those two performances. But what stood out for me was the team's single-mindedness in executing our game plan.
“We are coming!” became a catchphrase that year. Sometimes the guys still rib me a little about it.
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