Kobus Marais is set to play his 100th match for Strela-Ak Bars on Sunday, 20 September, when the Russian champions face Slava in the first game at their new home ground in Kazan.
Speaking to Hoërskool Ben Viljoen in Groblersdal, the fly-half put his tally for the club past 950 points, with 1,000 in range depending on how many games remain this season. No public database independently confirms those figures, so they are his and the club’s.
From Groblersdal to Kazan: the Kobus Marais route
According to his Wikipedia profile, Marais was born in Richards Bay on 5 July 1994 and raised in Limpopo around Marble Hall and Groblersdal. The same page shows 11 first-class games and 85 points for the Bulls, a short 2016 stint at the Eastern Province Kings, then 30 games and 213 points for the Pumas from 2017 to 2020.
He came through the Limpopo Blue Bulls and the Blue Bulls academy, and was always more the dependable boot than the headline playmaker.
The phone call from JP Nel
In 2020 the call came from JP Nel, the former Bulls centre who had taken charge in Kazan a year earlier. Offers from Narbonne in France and from Treviso and Petrarca in Italy were also on the table, and he and his parents chose Kazan.
In the school interview, he names his parents as the real support system behind the move.
The World Cup was part of the reasoning. Speaking to Maroela Media in 2020, he said three years of residency could open the door to a Russia jersey.
According to Wikipedia, Nel, born in Worcester in 1981, played 78 Super Rugby games for the Bulls and 78 Currie Cup and Vodacom Cup matches for the Blue Bulls. He then spent two seasons in Japan with NTT Shining Arcs and finished at Griquas. He never played for the Springboks, and coached Namibia’s backs in 2017 and 2018 before taking the Kazan job at the club’s 2019 relaunch.
Wikipedia’s club entry traces Strela back to 1967. It played as Burevestnik Kazan until 1989 and as Strela from 1989 until it became Strela-Ak Bars in 2023.
Russian reports describe a 1990s rugby league powerhouse whose union side won the second tier in 2011 and dropped out of the elite after 2013 when the money ran out. Tatarstan backing and the TAIF energy group rebuilt it in 2019.
A South African pocket in Tatarstan
Nel has surrounded Marais with familiar accents. Former Springbok lock Andries Bekker is the forwards coach. Club reports list scrumhalf Deon Carstens, hooker Dameon Venter and centre Edmund Ludik in the squad alongside Namibian World Cup back Johann Tromp.
Namibian fly-half and fullback PW Steenkamp joined from Polish club rugby in 2025. Jaco Engels and Gary Botha have also coached the forwards in Nel’s time.
His first Strela match was against CSKA at Tulpar. Marais spent 2021 at Berre in French Fédérale 1, where player records show 72 points in seven games, before returning to Kazan.
The door that closed
In March 2022, World Rugby suspended Russia and Belarus from international and cross-border club rugby until further notice. The residency plan that had helped bring Marais to Kazan no longer led to a World Cup, and that 2020 interview now reads as a closed chapter.
The domestic league carried on, and so did he. The contracts, the project and life in Kazan still worked, and the South Africans stayed.
Kazan winters drop to around −15°C, and the squad used to train indoors when it got that cold, which is one reason the heated pitch at the new ground matters.
Ending Krasnoyarsk’s grip on the Russian Rugby Championship
For most of the 2010s, the Russian Rugby Championship belonged to Krasnoyarsk. Enisei-STM and Krasny Yar, both from the Siberian city, dominated, with VVA-Podmoskovye the historic record champions.
Strela-Ak Bars won their first Russian Cup in 2023 and the Super Cup in 2024. According to Russian reports, they went 13–1 in the 2023/24 league and lost the final 12–11 to Enisei-STM.
The 2025 season is the one Marais calls the peak of his career. Strela took the Super Cup, then the Russian Cup in a final against Lokomotiv Penza in Moscow on 7 September 2025.
Match reports have them finishing third in the regular season and beating Krasny Yar in the semi-final. They then beat Dynamo Moscow 32–30 in the championship final, which Russian reports place at Tulpar on 12 October 2025.
Those reports have Marais converting three of Strela’s four tries, from Grinyaev, Davydov, Carstens and Tromp, in a Russian championship final with no Krasnoyarsk side in it.
A new home for the 100th
According to Russian reports, the new rugby centre on Rauis Gareev Street, next to Tulpar, opened in early September. It covers about 5,400 square metres, with a heated artificial pitch, 1,750 open seats, gyms, medical rooms, ten bedrooms and offices.
Nel told local media it is the best rugby stadium in the northern hemisphere, and that a true home ground is worth 10 to 15 percent to his team. Tulpar, which Wikipedia lists at 3,275 seats, stays on as a training and student pitch, and Kazan’s Central Stadium remains available for bigger occasions.
In the school interview he jokes about his hairline and says he still feels 26.
Six winters after answering the call from JP Nel, Kobus Marais is the club’s long-serving No.10 and, since 2025, a Russian champion.
