Background on Fabio de Jager’s Rugby Development

Fabio has shown a very keen interest in sport in general but in particular rugby from a very young age. One of the main reasons for him joining CBC were the sporting prospects that it offered. He has been a swimmer since 18 months and joined club swimming at the age of 8.

In Year 2, he was 8 years old and his older brother Tiago in year 3 were on the field playing rugby and Fabio begged Tiago’s coach to please let him play. Every single match, he drove the coach mad saying “please coach, please let me play” and every time the coach would laugh and smile and say “next year my boy”.

Well it came to the last match of the season and there were 5 minutes left of the game and finally coach said “ok you can play”. Well that was Fabio in a flat spin to get kit on and he was on that field and he never looked back.

2020 and Covid came about and Fabio like most other kids could not play any sport. So swimming was all he could do to keep fit.

2021 Fabio was in year 4 and boy was he excited to play rugby!

A previous parent of CBC spotted Fabio on the field at a CBC game when he was in year 4 in 2021. With him being an ex-Sharks rugby player, he told me that Fabio has talent and we need to nurture it and develop it. He insisted he had talent and we must help him achieve his potential.

Fabio indeed hounded us to join a club as all he wanted to do was to play and learn rugby.

We then joined Phillip Lemmer a current Sharks coach and at the time he was a Lions coach. This training was at an academy level with focus on skills development and fitness until the season for rugby commenced at club level.

In 2022 Fabio joined the Under 11 Benoni Northerns rugby team and made the A team. That team went on to win the league.

He carried on with Phillip Lemmers rugby academy in the off season until April 2022 when Benoni Northerns Season commenced. He then played under 12 and that teams also went on to win the league.

This under 12 team was a really fantastic team and the boys asked their coaches to try put a 7’s team together as they wanted to continue playing when the 15’s season was complete.

Fabio’s rugby club, Benoni Northerns submitted a team for the 7’s tournament with the new coach at the academy Dawid Grobler. This 7s team went on to win the 7s Rhino cup and in the league, they placed 3^rd. This was a fantastic achievement considering it was their first time playing 7s and the game is quite different to the 15s game of rugby.

Fabio was then selected at a JARU 7s tournament to attend Hilton College Sharks academy in the first weekend of December 2023 which he did and his previous coach from the academy Phillip Lemmer was also present at the training. The level of development at Hilton was of a superior level and world class. Fabio gained so much knowledge and skills from that weekend as well as exposure to under 12 rugby players from different provinces and coaches / players from national and international teams.

Fabio was also a RUGGA academy member and did further development with this academy throughout the year.

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