{"id":269582,"date":"2025-11-18T11:39:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T11:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/269582\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T11:39:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T11:39:08","slug":"springbok-rugby-obsessive-handre-pollard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/269582\/","title":{"rendered":"Springbok rugby obsessive Handre Pollard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Next week, Handre Pollard<\/a> is set to face Wales<\/a> for the 10th time in his stellar Test career.<\/p>\n

Outside of The Rugby Championship, Wales are his most familiar opponent and the 31-year-old has a host of memories from those past encounters.<\/p>\n

The Springbok sharpshooter will never forget the 2015 World Cup quarter-final at Allianz Stadium, London, a 23-19 win for the Boks.<\/p>\n

Such was his rising stock, Pollard had already accumulated 18 caps at that stage, despite only making his debut fresh from the U20s a year-and-a-half before.<\/p>\n

However, Pollard looked destined to be the fall-guy at Twickenham, as kick after kick went wide of the poles. Eventually, he found his radar and slotted a 62nd-minute penalty, and that proved to be enough to keep Wales at bay.<\/p>\n

\u201cI missed three kicks in the second half, that was a tight game, and I was still a young kid and I started feeling the pressure quite a lot,\u201d he admitted, when speaking with Rhino<\/a>, the official ball supplier to the Springboks.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, luckily I came back and kicked the one towards the end. That also made me grow into a different kind of person and a kicker going forward, because if you learn from those things you become better.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can overthink it (kicking), if it doesn\u2019t go according to plan,\u201d he added. \u201cBut if you break it down to the most simple stuff: your setup, making sure your run up is good and you strike the ball where you want to, then that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked to name his best moment in the green and gold, the scorer of 825 Test points, said: \u201cIt\u2019s difficult to nail it down, I think winning the trophies with your team-mates and stuff is the nicest part about it. But, individually, I would probably have to say the kick in the semi-final of the World Cup in 2023 was probably the biggest momnent of my career.\u201d<\/p>\n

Almost a quarter of a century has passed since Pollard was running around playing small-field U7s rugby in Somerset West.<\/p>\n

And while rugby is now his job, and a highly pressured one at that, Pollard says he never wants to forget that feeling of picking up a rugby ball as a youngster, and the joy the game brings.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know, it\u2019s weird, but you just can\u2019t help yourself, you just have got to pick it (a rugby ball) up, and have a crack, whether it is kicking, passing, running. That\u2019s how we grew up, and ever since then it\u2019s been a sort of a love affair, and it has grown and grown and grown.<\/p>\n

\u201cProfessionally, it has changed a bit, it is not just fun. Of course, there is a lot more to it now. But that feeling of coming onto a training pitch and picking it (the ball) up, and that first pass or kick, there\u2019s still something about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce you lose that enjoyment I think you should probably stop playing the game because that\u2019s why I started doing it and you want to keep trying to do it as long as I can.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Next week, Handre Pollard is set to face Wales for the 10th time in his stellar Test career.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-269582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}