Birthday Tribute – Bakkies Botha | 23 September 2026 | Blue Bulls · Toulon · Springboks · Rugby
There are locks who clean out rucks. And then there are locks whose arrival at a ruck changes what everyone else in it decides to do. Bakkies Botha belongs firmly in the second category. He was born on 22 September 1979, in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal, and this Bakkies Botha birthday tribute lands a day after he turned 47.
NEWCASTLE, TWO TECHNICAL HIGH SCHOOLS AND A 2.02-METRE FRAME
John Philip Botha came out of a steel town in northern KwaZulu-Natal and went to school at HTS Middelburg and then Vereeniging HTS. Neither is one of the famous rugby nurseries that feed the Springbok pipeline as a matter of routine. Both are technical schools, where boys learn trades.
What he took out of them was a frame that would settle at 2.02 metres and 124 kilograms, and a willingness to use every part of it.
FALCONS TO LOFTUS: THE MAKING OF A NUMBER FOUR
His senior rugby started on the East Rand with the Falcons, where he played 22 matches across 1999 and 2000. In 2001 he moved to the Blue Bulls, and Pretoria became home for the next decade.
He played 53 Currie Cup matches and 100 Super Rugby matches for the Bulls, locking the scrum alongside Victor Matfield. Matfield ran the lineout; Bakkies Botha did the collisions. The Bulls won Super Rugby in 2007, 2009 and 2010 with that pairing in the engine room.
Bakkies Botha’s Springbok debut came on 9 November 2002, away to France in Marseille, a match South Africa lost 30-10. He was yellow-carded for stamping. It was an accurate preview.
BAKKIES BOTHA AND THE DISCIPLINARY FILE: EIGHT WEEKS, THREE MATCHES, NEVER A RED
In August 2003, after a Test against Australia, he was cited over allegations of biting and eye-gouging Wallaby hooker Brendan Cannon. He was sanctioned for attacking the face and banned for eight weeks.
It set the pattern for the reputation. A three-match ban for an incident involving Phil Waugh followed in April 2009. In 2010 came four weeks for an incident with Gio Aplon and nine weeks for one with All Black Jimmy Cowan.
The Test record tells a different story from the reputation. Across 85 Tests Bakkies Botha collected four yellow cards and was never sent off. Mark Keohane, writing in his KEO UNCUT column in February 2026, said Botha pushed boundaries but lived largely within them.
PARIS, 20 OCTOBER 2007: 15-6 AND THE WEBB ELLIS CUP
The 2007 World Cup final at the Stade de France was a game without a try, decided by penalties and by South Africa’s forwards refusing to give England a foothold. Percy Montgomery kicked four, Frans Steyn one, and the Springboks won 15-6.
The Bakkies Botha lock partnership with Matfield started the final, Botha in the number four jersey. England had one of the best lineouts in world rugby and never controlled the contest in the air or on the ground. Five years after the Marseille debut, he was a world champion.
2009: THE LIONS BEATEN 2-1, AND THE JUSTICE 4 ARMBANDS
The British and Irish Lions arrived in June 2009 for their first tour of South Africa in twelve years. The Springboks won the first Test in Durban and the second at Loftus Versfeld, where Morné Steyn’s long-range penalty sealed the series.
In that second Test, Botha’s clean-out on Welsh prop Adam Jones dislocated Jones’s shoulder. He was cited and banned for two weeks, missing the third Test at Ellis Park. His teammates took the field wearing armbands reading “Justice 4”, his jersey number. The Lions won that dead rubber, and the series finished 2-1 to South Africa.
The Springboks went on to win the Tri-Nations that year. Between the Bulls’ Super Rugby title, the Lions series and the Tri-Nations, 2009 was the most complete season of his career.
TOULON, 2011 TO 2015: THREE EUROPEAN CUPS
The Bakkies Botha Toulon years started in 2011, and the Mediterranean club was building something expensive and serious under Bernard Laporte. Botha became the hard edge of it.
Toulon won the Heineken Cup in 2013 and 2014, and the first European Champions Cup in 2015. In 2014 they also won the Top 14, completing the domestic and European double. Midi Olympique named him the standout number four of 2013, and a Champions Cup fans’ vote later picked him as the best number four lock in the European Cup’s history.
Toulon did not end his Test career. He kept playing for the Springboks from France, and his final cap came in November 2014, twelve years after Marseille. He retired from professional rugby in 2015.
FROM ENFORCER TO BUTCHER, CATTLEMAN AND CONSERVATIONIST
Botha married Carien in 2005. While still in France he started selling Bakkies Boerewors, taking South African sausage to a country that takes its charcuterie seriously. The business grew into Bakkies the Butcher.
Since 2020 he has farmed B4 Beefmasters, a cattle operation. He is also behind HelpJag, a venison charity, and is involved in anti-poaching work. The man whose name was shorthand for physical intimidation on a rugby field now spends his time on cattle, feeding people and protecting wildlife.
From all of us at Just Plain Sport — Bakkies Botha retired with a World Cup, a Lions series, three European Cups and a clean Test record on red cards, which nobody who faced him would have bet on. 🎂🏉
