Jacques van Rooyen had a solid but mainly unspectacular career as a prop with the Lions and Bulls in South Africa. He was not a giant but looked exactly what you would expect a gnarled former Afrikaner policeman to look like and for a period he haunted the dreams of Thomas du Toit.
Last month, Bath’s head of rugby, Johann van Graan, described Du Toit as “one of the best players in the entire world of rugby” and few people would call that hyperbole. But back in 2018, Du Toit was all potential and promise after transitioning from loosehead to tighthead with the Sharks when he came up against Van Rooyen, who looked upon the fresh-faced 22-year-old like a juicy boerewors sizzling on the braai.
Du Toit remembers feeling like the first scrum went backwards 20 yards. It got worse from there. “He smoked me, completely smoked me,” Du Toit says with a grimace. “If he did not win five penalties against me that day, it was seven. He killed me. It is difficult to get over that as a young guy.”
Du Toit is sharing this story and one of his most formative experiences to illustrate the pitfalls that can befall young players, especially front-rowers. There is huge, justifiable excitement around the emergence of tighthead Billy Sela, whom Du Toit has helped to mentor, and hooker Kepu Tuipulotu at Bath this season. With barely half a dozen Prem Rugby starts between them, the pair have been touted for call-ups to England’s Nations Championship campaign where they could face Du Toit’s Springboks at Ellis Park.
The message from Du Toit is not to rush them. Tightheads, especially, take time to develop as his own example demonstrates. “These are really good players,” Du Toit said. “I’m a big fan of all of them. They all play very good rugby. The unfortunate thing with tightheads and props in general is there is a big learning curve in the beginning. They will go backwards a couple of times like everyone else did who starts playing that position. You need to have some people around you who have been through that who you can lean on and so I can help guys like Billy. Then later in life, that’s when you are able to dish out a bit more than you are receiving.”
Du Toit is the personification of good things coming to those who wait. Whether or not you concur with Van Graan’s assessment, the 30-year-old is widely considered the best tighthead on the planet. He is certainly the most unique. A handful of tightheads could pull a shift at loosehead in an emergency. Du Toit can do both to a world-class standard. In fact, he also has been training at hooker for Bath in a break-glass scenario. “If they needed me there, I’d back my throwing,” laughs Du Toit, who won seven trophies with Bath and South Africa last year.
But if Du Toit is now relishing the view at the mountaintop, it has taken a long trek to get there. He missed out on initial selection for the 2019 World Cup before being called up as an injury replacement. He was then overlooked for the 2023 World Cup where the Springboks became back-to-back champions. Like with Van Rooyen, he now considers it a blessing amidst the cruellest of disguises.
“When I look back at it, I was devastated,” Du Toit said. “It was my second time attempting to be in a Springbok squad and the second time that I hadn’t made it. It was a very sad time in my family life but my wife and my parents, we just handled it accordingly. Looking back at it now, how important was that for my Bath career? Getting in here early and understanding the structures and the way Bath wanted to play. There’s so many good things that have come out of it. It would be wrong of me for say I wouldn’t want to be part of the Springboks team that won the World Cup but ultimately it has worked out fantastically.”
Like so many great props, Du Toit hails from agricultural stock. His family owns a farm in the Western Cape where he says he had the “best ever childhood”. As soon as he could walk, he was driving quad bikes. “Then we moved onto tractors, lorries and combine harvesters,” Du Toit said. “Anything with an engine basically.”
Yet there is no rugby lineage in his family. His father only reached the heights of his school’s C team. “He played right wing because he could not pass off his left hand,” Du Toit says dismissively. “So he played in the worst team in the worst position.”
What he did inherit was a ferocious work ethic. “We were raised with this idea of working really hard for everything that we got,” Du Toit said. “That was something that was imprinted on me from a very early age of understanding what hard work means and how to do it. You can have all the talent in the world, but it does not mean anything unless you work at it. That’s probably kind of my life motto I have taken through the years at school and through my career in rugby.”
Du Toit will return to the Sharks at the end of the season for what he calls “family reasons” after three years with Bath. He says he will desperately miss the club, the supporters and his neighbours in Corsham, Wiltshire. Shares in the local butcher, Toby Haynes, will take a hit given Du Toit’s regular visits to stock up on meat for his homemade boerewors and biltong. “Every time I go round and ask for certain bits he knows exactly what it’s for,” Du Toit said. “All our neighbours are fantastic people and we have special relationships with a lot of them.”
Before he departs, there is the small matter of the Champions Cup semi-final against Bordeaux Bègles in their home city. As much as Van Graan preaches about the process, Du Toit acknowledges there is a different feel around the club this week as he enters the home straight of his time in the West Country which has taken his career to new heights. His pick-and-go game, as Van Graan says, is “absolutely amazing” and has helped him to plunder 23 tries for Bath.
And yet the first thing that both coaches and team-mates reference is that Du Toit is the ultimate team man. This season, he has been named as a replacement in 13 of his 19 appearances, including the quarter-final against Northampton. In part, that’s because of Van Graan’s desire to unleash the Tank as part of his own bomb squad but also to help accelerate the development of Sela and Archie Griffin as his future successors.
“I couldn’t care less whether I start, I just want to win the game,” Du Toit said. “So wherever Johann feels I need to slot into the team I completely trust his opinion. The guys coming off the bench are just as important as the guys starting. I have told him multiple times if I am not playing a good game, take me off after 30 minutes. If the tighthead who is starting is not playing well, take him off after 30 minutes. There’s no shame in it. We all have bad days.”
Despite being named World Rugby’s tighthead of the year, the memory of the Van Rooyen still stalks Du Toit’s thoughts.