Oom Piet was a Free State and Sharks legend

Craig Davidson is a successful La Lucia restauranter but rugby fans will better recall him as a pugnacious scrumhalf for the Sharks and Springboks in the early 2000s.

I have vivid memories of Davidson putting his body on the line for province and country but also have a middle-of-the-night image of him playing carpet bowls with Sharks team manager Piet Strydom.

I can’t recall why I happened to be walking down a hotel corridor in the wee hours of a Dunedin morning but there was Davidson and Oom Piet playing bowls, and most competitively at that.

Davidson was a pre-match insomniac and team doctor Craig Roberts had given up prescribing sleeping tablets to Energy Bunny Davidson — they might as well have been smarties.

In any case, there they were hotly contesting a game of carpet bowls not too many hours before kick-off against the Highlanders, with current Springbok attack coach Tony Brown just one of the adversaries Davidson would face.

Davidson would get enough sleep in the end and deliver for the Sharks while for Strydom, it was just another chapter in his job of looking after the players.

Strydom last week passed away at the age of 78 and his contribution to South African sport should be trumpeted to the heavens

Let me give you an example: Piet Strydom was the fullback for the Cheetahs when the gritty Free Staters came within a controversial refereeing call of being the only team to beat the 1974 British Lions.

Not even the Springboks could do that. The only match that Willie John McBride’s team did not win was the (drawn) third Test.

In Bloemfontein, the Cheetahs came agonisingly close to beating the Lions and their last line of defence was fullback Strydom.

McBride said of that game: “Those Free Staters were the toughest buggers I have ever played against. We gave them hell. They were bloodied, bullied and bruised but took blow after blow. They had no conception of surrender.”

There can be no better tribute to Strydom and the Cheetahs.

Oom Piet, as the Sharks players affectionately called him, knew nothing other than competing with honour and courage.

He was one of four brothers and, growing up in the fierce environment of garden cricket and rugby, there was no quarter asked or given.

At one point all four “boets” — Steve, Willie, Piet and Corrie — were in the Free State cricket team, a feat that is unlikely to be emulated.

Piet came within a whisker of what would have been a remarkable cricketing record.

In a match against Transvaal in the early ‘70s, he fell three runs short of becoming the first batter in South Africa to score a century and a double century in the same game — he scored 97 and 234.

Steve, Willie and Piet also played in the same Cheetahs rugby team and their record of 145 brotherly appearances is unlikely to be beaten.

The Strydom brothers were passionate teachers, and this profession took Piet to Durban from Bloemfontein.

He played for that historic club Durban Collegians until an injury forced him to retire at 30.

Managing the Sharks became Piet’s obsession and he was a master at it because he taught the players the importance of amateur traditions while embracing the new.

Davidson has an anecdote that sums up this great South African.

“We beat the Cheetahs in a Currie Cup semi-final and I was convinced we would have new jerseys for the final so I swapped mine with (opposite number) Neil Powell (the current Sharks director of rugby, funnily enough).

“But Oom Piet counts the jerseys and there is one short and it wasn’t hard to discover which one.

“He told me, When I played, I got one set of socks and one jersey for the season. ‘You ‘lighties’ have no idea how spoiled you are’. But he said it with a smile and a wink.

"It was an absolute honour to learn about rugby and life from Oom Piet.”