{"id":322346,"date":"2025-12-18T06:48:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T06:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/322346\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T06:48:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T06:48:07","slug":"springbok-enforcer-bakkies-botha-names-the-player-who-scared-him-page-3-of-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/322346\/","title":{"rendered":"Springbok Enforcer Bakkies Botha Names the Player Who &#8216;Scared&#8217; Him &#8211; Page 3 of 3"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\ud83d\udda4 Richie McCaw \u2013 The Breakdown King of New Zealand<\/p>\n<p>Bio:<br \/>Widely regarded as the greatest player in rugby history, Richie McCaw captained the All Blacks to back-to-back World Cup victories in 2011 and 2015. With 148 Test caps, his intelligence at the breakdown, relentless drive, and leadership made him a nightmare opponent for any forward.<\/p>\n<p>Botha said:<br \/>\u201cThey were always the hardest opponents we faced and there was no better player than Richie McCaw that I came up against. My role was clear when playing against them: make the breakdown brutal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf McCaw or any of the New Zealand boys had to take a moment to look out for me, then I knew I was winning. When I played them, I always wanted them to know I was coming for them, and the biggest compliment I ever received was from (South Africa coach) Jake White, who said he could see they had fear in their eyes during the game.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>EDITORS PICKS:<\/p>\n<p>Like this:<\/p>\n<p>Like Loading&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"sd-link-color\"\/>\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\ud83d\udda4 Richie McCaw \u2013 The Breakdown King of New Zealand Bio:Widely regarded as the greatest player in rugby&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-322346","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322346","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=322346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}