Young stars get a chance to shine in Jukskei Derby

The University of Johannesburg Rugby Stadium will be the setting for this Saturday’s Carling Currie Cup Jukskei Derby Round 3 clash between the Fidelity ADT Lions and the Vodacom Bulls XV.

Fresh from their 52-29 victory over the Airlink Pumas at 10bet Ellis Park last week, the men from Doornfontein head into the weekend with a winning mindset against a Bulls side who are yet to register a win in this year’s campaign.

Mziwakhe Nkosi’s troops will be boosted by the return of talented Junior Springbok fullback Gilermo Mentoe, who makes his first appearance in Lions colours at senior level. The former Bishops schoolboy is joined by another Junior Springbok and Wynberg Boys High old boy Asad Moos who gets a start at scrumhalf.

Speaking ahead of Saturday, Nkosi was cautious about taking a relaxed approach against their neighbours, despite their rough start to the competition.

“We would be silly to take the Bulls lightly this Saturday,” Nkosi said. “They have outstanding players, coupled with a good coaching staff and probably have just had rough draw in the competition by playing their first two games away from home, including the upcoming fixture.”

“I have no doubt that they’ll be up for the challenge. In fact, the last time we played against the Bulls (with the same management team), we lost to them in the Under-23 Cup final at 10bet Ellis Park. There is little to no chance of us taking them lightly,” he warned.

Kick-off at UJ Stadium is at 5.05pm.

The Bulls travel to the University of Johannesburg this Saturday to face the Lions still searching for their first win of the Carling Currie Cup campaign, with head coach Phiwe Nomlomo confirming a growing injury list that now stretches close to 20 players.

Nomlomo’s side sit 0-2 after defeats to Boland and Griquas, and the losses have come at a cost. Speaking to media on Tuesday, the coach confirmed that hooker Shaun Schuurmann and centre PA van Niekerk will both miss the remainder of the season, both with severe knee injuries, while club captain Nama Xaba’s campaign is also over (broken finger).

“We saw Shaun leave the field pretty early. That’s his season pretty done for us,” Nomlomo said. ‘We also saw PA leave in the first half. Unfortunately, that’s also his season over.”

He added that the captain’s absence was a particular blow. Experienced Nicolaas Janse van Rensburg will captain the team in his absence.

JJ Theron and Neil le Roux have also been ruled out, while the fitness of Devon Williams remains uncertain heading into the weekend.

Nomlomo pointed to the demands of running three squads simultaneously as a key factor behind the mounting casualty list, with players shared between the Currie Cup side, a group preparing for a fixture against the All Blacks in two weeks, and an under-20 team that kicks off its own season this weekend.

“We’re servicing three teams at the moment,” he said. “So it’s all hands on deck, and we’re giving it our best shot in terms of trying to make sure that all teams are as competitive as possible. Our depth is really tested.”

Asked whether the Bulls XV would follow other franchises in calling up Under-20 players to bolster the senior squad, as the Pumas have done, Nomlomo confirmed reinforcements were on the way. “Everyone who was part of that world championship Under-20 winning side comes back to us, bar maybe a guy like Luan (Giliomee) and will be part of the 23.”

The Bulls will renew a long-standing rivalry with the Lions, having beaten them in the final of the Under-23 competition earlier this year but Nomlomo dismissed any notion that history would carry into Saturday’s derby.

“Please don’t remind them that they lost in the final,” he quipped. “This team won, that team lost. This is the Currie Cup. Different campaign altogether. I think it comes with different challenges.”

Nomlomo also pushed back on the suggestion that the Under-23 title should have translated into a stronger start to the Currie Cup, pointing instead to the depth advantage enjoyed by sides that progressed through the SA Cup.

“A team like the Griquas haven’t stopped playing. Their depth is massive,” he said. “They played in the SA Cup, then they went and played in the Toyota Challenge where they didn’t lose one guy in the starting 15, so they were able to rotate quite nicely. It’s not just a Vodacom Bulls thing. I think other unions are feeling the same pain.”

With two defeats on the board, Nomlomo was asked whether the Bulls’ broader mandate of developing young talent risked being sidelined in the push for results. He insisted the two goals were not in conflict.

“It’s at the forefront with everything that we do,” he said. “We want to develop players while winning. That’s the best place where you want the player to be. However, you don’t want those guys to also get used to losing, because that also can become a habit.”

Nomlomo said the week’s preparation had focused on correcting the profligacy that cost the team against Griquas.

“I thought we were naive at times in how we put ourselves in good places. We didn’t finish,” he said. “The biggest thing that we’re focusing on this week is just ourselves. The Lions will obviously bring a strong side and they also want to get their season going.”

With their Carling Currie Cup campaign in urgent need of a turnaround after two consecutive defeats, the Bulls have received a timely boost with six members of South Africa’s World Rugby U20 Championship-winning squad included in the matchday 23 for their clash against the Lions.

Siphosethu Mnebelele, Kebotile Maake, Heinrich Theron, Hendre Schoeman, Aka Boqwane and Thomas Beling all return to Bulls colours after helping the Junior Springboks lift the World Rugby U20 Championship trophy, providing an injection of youthful confidence and proven winning pedigree ahead of this crucial Jukskei derby taking place at the University of Johannesburg.

The match will also mark an important milestone for several of the young stars, with seven players in line to make their Currie Cup debuts. Maake, Theron, Schoeman and winger Lindsey Jansen all start, while Johnathan Eloff, Boqwane and Lavela Pongolo could earn their first Currie Cup caps from the bench. Janse van Rensburg ill lead a side that blends established campaigners with emerging talent. He forms the second-row partnership with Sintu Manjezi, while world champion Beling starts at No 8 alongside fellow debutants Maake and Theron in the loose trio.

In the backline, another Junior Springbok world champion, Hendre Schoeman, gets the nod at scrumhalf alongside flyhalf Keagan Johannes. Jansen starts on the wing, with Devon Williams adding valuable experience at fullback.

The Bulls coaching staff will hope the blend of youthful enthusiasm and senior leadership can help spark their season after a losing start. With local pride and valuable Currie Cup points at stake against their Gauteng rivals, Saturday’s encounter presents an opportunity for a new generation of Bulls talent to announce themselves.

Meanwhile, Lizo Gqoboka has played his last game of rugby and true to the man, he is walking away not with regret but with gratitude.

The Bulls prop, capped twice by the Springboks and a veteran of well over a century of appearances in blue, confirmed his retirement this week at the age of 36, closing the book on a career that began not on a rugby field but under a tree in rural Eastern Cape.

“I think it’s been long coming,” Gqoboka said, reflecting on a decision he says he has quietly been preparing for since his early thirties. “Most of my early thirties and the past four years especially, with all the injuries I was getting back to back, I knew it was really getting close. But I was so grateful to finish here, with the Vodacom Bulls.”

Fittingly, he went out on his own terms. In his final appearance, a warm-up fixture against the Falcons, Gqoboka was named Man of the Match, scoring two tries and winning eight scrum penalties. The following week, with no fresh injury forcing his hand, he told the union he was done.

“I just felt that it’s time, you know? I knew I was always on the edge, but I just had this knowing now that it’s time, at 36. I’ve had a good run. I’ve had a really good run, and so I think my heart is just full with gratitude and contentment.”

Few current players can match the distance Gqoboka has travelled. Raised in Mount Frere, he did not pick up a rugby ball in earnest until he was 19, starting out as an eighthman before eventually settling at prop. Before that, life looked very different.

“Where I come from, in the rural areas of the Eastern Cape, I was taught everything in isiXhosa. I only learned English in university,” he said. “I mean, back home, people laugh when I say the first time I had a pizza with a topping, I was in varsity and I didn’t even know they existed.”

He worked loading trucks at 15 and later at a funeral parlour at 17, jobs he still speaks about with affection rather than bitterness. “I still go there and greet some of the people who still work there. Crazy, amazing loyalty.”

Even as his rugby career took shape, Gqoboka kept working, completing a business management qualification in Durban and later holding down a full day job at a construction firm building a bridge in Pinetown, training and playing club rugby in the evenings.

“I couldn’t tell you the difference between a prop and a hooker when I started,” he admitted. “I had never watched rugby before I played it. I just took the ball and ran fast because I played soccer and did athletics. I think that’s why I was picked, because I didn’t know what I was doing.”

It was a former EP Kings connection (Robbi Kempson) who first spotted something in him and helped convince Alan Solomons to hand him his first professional contract. From there, Gqoboka built a career that took him through the Stormers, a stint at Montpellier and finally more than a decade as a first-choice prop for the Bulls.

“You still need to work hard. You still need to be disciplined. You still need to be teachable,” he said of the climb. “I had the humility to ask for help from other players, to stay behind and say, help me, how do I tackle, how do I pass? I am not a self-made man. I am a sum of the teachings of my parents, my environment, my family, my friends, my coaches.”

Of all the honours, one stands above the rest. “Definitely playing for the Springboks, representing my country. I think that’s the biggest one for any player.”

Close behind, he says, is what it took simply to survive at a union like the Bulls for a decade. “It takes more than just talent to stay at such a big union, where talent comes every day. To stay there for 10 years speaks of character.”

Asked which opponent gave him the toughest afternoons in the scrum, Gqoboka did not hesitate. “Frans (Malherbe) was tough. He’s not just big and strong, he’s also technically sound and you barely find those guys. Someone might be strong but not technically sound or trying all the tricks but not quite there in terms of strength. With Frans, he was such an all-rounder, in terms of strength and technique.”

Gqoboka is refreshingly candid about the pillars that have carried him. “It’s definitely my faith and the atmosphere at home that my wife created, the support, the prayers of my mom, my dad, and my kids.”

Ministry, he says, will now move from the background of his career to its centre. He has recently completed a second degree, this time in theology, and preaching has quietly run through his entire playing career. “It’s always been who I am, what I live. It’s just a continuation of it. Funny enough, at the Stormers I called the guys into the physio room, shared the gospel, and five of them gave their lives to Jesus at the stadium.”

Off the field, he has also built a business in earthmoving equipment, and discipline shows there too: a savings habit he started at 22, the moment he signed his first contract.

“It was about the habit and the discipline of putting away more than the amount,” he said, a philosophy that allowed him to buy equipment outright rather than lean on financing. He also plans to lean further into motivational speaking, drawing on a story that, by any measure, is remarkable: a boy who first went to school under a tree in Mount Frere, who did not touch a rugby ball until he was nearly out of his teens, going on to earn two Springbok caps and build a life most would call unimaginable from where he started.

Home, for now, remains Midstream in Centurion, where he has lived for the past decade and where all his children were born, alongside a house the family has also built back in the Eastern Cape.

Beyond the numbers and the honours, those who have worked with Gqoboka point to something less measurable: a warmth that never seemed to dim, even through years of injury setbacks that would have worn down most players.

“Lizo’s journey is one of the most remarkable stories in South African rugby, defined not just by his physical power on the field but by his humility, resilience, and character off it,” said Edgar Rathbone, chief executive of the Blue Bulls Company. “To arrive at the game so late and go on to earn two Springbok caps while serving as a foundational pillar for the Vodacom Bulls for over a decade speaks volumes about the man he is. He leaves behind an inspiring legacy at Loftus Versfeld, and while we will miss his leadership and infectious warmth in the changeroom, we wish him every success in this next chapter.”

It is a sentiment echoed by everyone who has crossed his path in a Vodacom Bulls jersey. Even through the injuries, the frustration, the years on the physio table, Gqoboka was the one guy in the changeroom with a permanent smile, a reminder that gratitude was never in short supply.

“I’m truly grateful,” he said, closing the conversation the way he seemed to close most things in his career: full of thanks, and looking ahead rather than back. “All my kids are born here. It’s home.”

Fidelity ADT Lions starting XV: 15 Gilermo Mentoe, 14 Keegan Smith, 13 Likhona Finca, 12 Rynhardt Jonker, 11 Rabz Maxwane; 10 Sam Francis, 9 Asad Moos; 8 Morne Venter, 7 Jarod Cairns, 6 Thando Biyela; 5 Ruan Delport (capt), 4 Dylan Sjoblom; 3 Conraad van Vuuren, 2 Mahle Sithole, 1 Morgan Naude. Replacements: 16 Ruan Welman, 17 Cecil Parsons, 18 Ruan Swart, 19 Marco Ferreira, 20 Renzo du Plessis, 21 Zian Cilliers, 22 Matthew Coetzee, 23 Exauce Kevani.

Vodacom Bulls XV starting XV: 15 Devon Williams, 14 Riyaad Bam, 13 Hakeem Kunene, 12 Christiaan Viok, 11 Lindsey Jansen; 10 Keagan Johannes, 9 Hendre Schoeman; 8 Thomas Beling, 7 Heinrich Theron, 6 Kebotile Maake; 5 Nicolaas Janse van Rensburg (capt), 4 Sintu Manjezi; 3 Dian Coetzee, 2 Jaundre Schoeman, 1 Damian Baker. Replacements: 16 Siphosethu Mnebelele, 17 Dylan Smith, 18 Jean Erasmus, 19 Johnathan Eloff, 20 Abongile Nonkontwana, 21 Cephas van Biljon, 22 Aka Boqwane, 23 Lavela Pongolo.