Tshotsho gets a second chance
Not everyone is privileged enough to get a second chance at doing what they love. And if you have been in the doldrums for two years, you lose hope of ever getting back into the game.
This is how the former Sevens player Tshotsho Mbovane felt before he was appointed as coach of the junior and senior Sevens team of the International Rugby Institute (IRI) in Pretoria.
“I am from Willowvale Nqadu in the Eastern Cape, but I was raised in Langa. Before being selected for the SA u.20 squad in 2012 (which won the Junior World Cup), I made my Sevens debut in 2011 against England in Adelaide. That was straight after high school. On my return to South Africa, I was injured in the u.21 Currie Cup semi-final for WP against the Sharks. While recovering from my injury, I was stabbed in Langa. I saw my dream of playing for SA in the Junior World Cup in 2012 in Cape Town disappear into thin air,” he says.
The then coach of the Junior Boks, Dawie Theron, gave him the opportunity to play in the Junior World Cup. Both Paul Treu (who was the Sevens coach at the time) and WP wanted his services. Mbovane was unhappy with WP’s offer and signed a two-year contract with Sevens.
When Treu left in 2013, Mbovane says he was not part of the new coaching staff’s plans. With no WP contract in the pipeline, he was on loan to Boland before he left to join the Leopards until the end of the rugby season in 2014. At the end of 2014, he moved back to Cape Town where he played on WP’s Vodacom side.
Mbovane played in the Vodacom Cup again in 2015. However, he was not
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