Malcolm Marx will leave the Kubota Spears when his contract expires in June 2027 and return to South Africa with his family, the club confirmed on Friday.
Nothing happens before then. Marx is contracted to Kubota for the whole of the 2026-27 Japan Rugby League One season, which starts in December, and he is only free to join another club once that contract runs out in June.
He gave one reason for going, and it was not rugby. Marx said family circumstances were behind what he called a difficult decision not to renew.
The Springbok hooker is 32. He had 93 Test caps by 30 October 2026, he won the World Cup in 2019 and in 2023, and he was named World Rugby Men’s 15s Player of the Year in 2025.
What Kubota Spears Said About Malcolm Marx
The club’s own release lists him at Kubota since 2020, in his seventh season there. Before that he was at the NTT Communications Shining Arcs from 2019 to 2020, and at the Lions from 2014 to 2019.
In his statement Marx thanked the company, the coaches, his teammates and the Orange Army, and said the club had taken his family in as members of the community.
That is the part of this story that explains the rest of it. A man who has spent most of a decade building a life abroad is unwinding it, and the club he is leaving says it understands why.
Marx also said his focus is now entirely on the season ahead and on finishing his time at the Spears properly.
Kubota have put a farewell graphic out on their own channels, built around the line “one last season” and the Japanese thank-you, arigatou Marukomu. It carries his squad number, 329, and tells him he will always belong to the Spears family.
What the post does not do is name a South African club.
The Bulls Link, And Why It Is Still Only A Report
South African media have reported since Friday that Marx has signed for the Vodacom Bulls and is expected in Pretoria around the middle of next year.
Those reports rest on unnamed sources inside the union. The Bulls have announced nothing, Marx has said nothing about where he goes next, and SA Rugby has said nothing either.
So the Japanese end of this is on the record from the club itself. The South African end is not.
The link is not invented, though. Bulls head coach Johan Ackermann said publicly in September that both Marx and Kwagga Smith were under discussion, and that neither deal was done.
Ackermann coached Marx at the Lions, where the hooker grew into a Springbok. He coached Smith there too.
Smith’s half of that sentence has since been settled properly. The Bulls confirmed on Sunday 25 October that he had signed a three-year deal, after the mutual termination of his contract with the Shizuoka Blue Revs earlier in the month.
That is what a confirmed signing looks like. Nothing of the sort has come out of Loftus Versfeld about Marx.
One Last Season In Orange
He is still a Kubota player, and he has a full campaign to give them before any of this becomes a Pretoria story.
His record there is already made. Marx helped the Spears win the League One title in 2022-23 and reach the final in each of the last two seasons.
Anyone circling a date should work from the contract rather than the rumour mill. A hooker contracted in Japan until June 2027 is not available to a South African franchise before June 2027, whatever gets announced between now and then.
For now he is away on international duty with the Springboks ahead of the Nations Championship, with the Japanese season still to start in December.
