The Springbok captain, considered one of the most successful ever, who started a sports science and technology research unit

Former Springbok rugby captain Morné du Plessis, seen as one of the best skippers to lead the national team, co-founded the Sports Science Institute of South Africa with Professor Tim Noakes after his retirement.

He played 32 games for the Springboks between 1971 and 1980, captaining the side for the final five years of his international career.

Du Plessis was born into a sporting family in Vereeniging in October 1949. His mother, Pat, captained the women’s national hockey team and his father, Felix, also captained the Springboks.

Three weeks before Du Plessis was born, the Springboks, under his father’s captaincy, beat the All Blacks three times in succession, a feat only achieved again in 2009.

After his family moved to Stilfontein and opened the only shop in town, Du Plessis attended Grey College in Bloemfontein, where he proved to be more of a cricketer than a rugby player.

He matriculated in 1966, and although he wasn’t called up for the Free State Craven Week side that year, he was included in the South African Schools XI as a seam bowler.

Once he left school, Du Plessis completed his national service at the Naval Gymnasium in Saldanha Bay in 1967 before enrolling at Stellenbosch University to study Industrial Psychology in 1968.

Cricket remained his primary focus when he joined the university, and he eventually was called up to the South African Universities side and the Western Province outfit.

However, all it took was the opening batsman of the Natal and national cricket team, Barry Richards, to hit Du Plessis for two sixes in the over before lunch for his attention to turn back to rugby.

The Stellenbosch campus was also dominated by rugby culture, according to du Plessis, and “going there to play cricket was like going to India to play rugby.”

After being selected as a lock for the first team side, the coach, Danie Craven, saw him as too small and moved him to eighth man.

This would be the position he played on his Springbok debut as part of a side touring Australia in 1971. The squad won all three matches while down under.

However, du Plessis’ liberal attitude, such as wearing denims with his Springbok blazer and supporting the Progressive Federal Party, did not sit well with the country’s conservative rugby administration.

Despite this, du Plessis had a scintillating Springbok rugby career and led the team to 13 victories out of the 15 played, giving him an 86.6% success rate as captain. 

This led to him becoming world-renowned, and he even had a New Zealand rugby player named after him — Du’Plessis Kirifi, who currently plays for the Hurricanes.

“Dad was a rugby player up in Auckland, he named me after Morné du Plessis, the South African number 8,” Karifi told Stuff New Zealand.

Du Plessis diverts his attention to development

Towards the end of the 1980 season, Du Plessis told Danie Craven he would be hanging up his boots and had played his last game due to mental fatigue.

“I said to him, I must be honest with him. This was my last game. I walked backwards while I left his office,” Du Plessis recalled in an interview.

“Doc never really did forgive me. We had a close bond, but he still mentioned that decision three weeks before he died.”

This decision was also partly influenced by the death of Du Plessis’ Province teammate Chris Burger, after he sustained a neck injury under his captaincy.

However, he would continue working in South African rugby, managing the Springbok World Cup-winning side in 1995.

After retiring the following year, Du Plessis started Sports Plan, a company that develops sports, service, and medical facilities.

Following a discussion with Johann Rupert, Sports Plan merged with the UCT Bioenergetics of Exercise Research Unit under Prof Tim Noakes to form the Sports Science Institute of South Africa (SSISA).

Tim Noakes is an emeritus professor in the Division of Exercise Science and Sports Medicine at UCT and gained widespread attention by repopularising the banting diet.

Du Plessis and Noakes said the institute aimed to contribute to nation-building through science and team-building.

“We felt motivated by Rupert that one of the easiest ways to get a nation together is to give them a common champion. One of the examples used was Muhammad Ali,” Du Plessis said.

“Just think what Ali did for racial relations. He was one of the beacons of our vision. If we could amplify it here, it could be great. To a certain extent, we were successful.”

SSISA is located in Newlands, Cape Town and offers several facilities to the general public, such as a state-of-the-art High Performance Centre, biomechanics lab, and conference centre.

In addition to co-founding SSISA, Du Plessis established the Chris Burger Petro Jackson Player Fund, which raises money to financially support seriously injured South African rugby players.

Sports Science Institute of South Africa