Netherlands

The tallest nation in the world, whose people fill Springbok halls of fame, are climbing the world rankings. Built on foundations laid by a chicken farmer from Botswana, the Netherlands have rebuilt their pathway and paved it with quality players of orange, including a boy named Wolf.

The Dutch diaspora has always had a big influence on world rugby. Game changing, record-breaking, occasionally controversial and, most recently, Lion-taming. A look at any of the great Springbok sides will reveal a plethora of names easily traced back to origins in the Netherlands and the settlers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century. The late, great Joost van der Westhuizen, his 1995 World Cup-winning captain Francois Pienaar and former South African Player of the Year Johann van Niekerk are just three influential figures with orange blood running through their veins. There are countless others. 

But while the Springboks have become three-time world champions, the ancestral home of many of the Afrikaners in the squad has yet to get anywhere near the Webb Ellis Cup – unless you count the day in 1998 when the national team ran out at the McAlpine Stadium in Huddersfield for a Rugby World Cup qualifier against England. That day, the trophy was pitch-side and no doubt many of the players now wish they had been too.

Neil Back and Jeremy Guscott both scored four tries in a 110-0 win that did little for Dutch rugby, or the RFU’s attempts to promote rugby in the north of England. England could have played with thirteen men in Huddersfield, the birthplace of rugby league, and still won at a canter. Come the final whistle the Dutch coach, Geoff Old, must have felt akin to his name, such was the scale of the mismatch. 

In 89 years of playing Test rugby, that is the only time the Netherlands have ever faced a team from the home unions, and the result did little to convince anyone that they deserved to grace the same field again. 

Former All Black Old left to become USA Rugby’s technical director in late 2000, shortly before the Netherlands experienced a brief but unsuccessful foray in the second-tier European Nations Cup (ENC) Division 1A. In 2002, facing the same sides that make up that same level today – Georgia, Russia, Romania, Spain and Portugal – they lost all five games, scored just 27 points and conceded 300. 

So out of place were the Dutch at this level, it’s taken them almost twenty years to return.

Size is on the side of the Netherlands. Dutch men and women are the tallest in the world, with an average height of six foot and five foot seven inches, respectively. But as the saying goes, ‘the bigger they are...’, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s taken a South African by the name of Gareth Gilbert to keep them on their feet.

Gareth had originally come to the Netherlands in 2003 to play prop for RC ‘t Gooi, which was founded in 1933 and is one of the oldest clubs in the country. After a sabbatical back at the family chicken farm in Botswana and some appearances for the Botswana national team in regional qualifiers for Rugby World Cup 2007, he returned to the Netherlands and his former club, this time as coach. Gareth duly led them to the Ereklasse domestic league title in 2009 – their first in over half a century.

Success at club level led to a move to the Netherlands women’s programme at a time when the Dutch became the first women’s sevens side to turn professional. Under Gareth, a famous win over France in the European Championship in fifteens was followed by an appearance in the Bowl final of the Sevens Rugby World Cup in 2013.

His reward was the dual role of technical director of Rugby Netherlands and head coach of the men’s national team, albeit in trying times. At the time they were ranked 35th in the world (eleven places below their current position as Rugby Journal went to press, beneath the likes of Poland and Kazakhstan), but the union was on its knees financially, paying the price for not having the resources to match their ambition.

Gareth’s approach was from the ‘bottom-up’, focusing on player development and making sure that, in a country where almost a fifth of the land is reclaimed from the sea, the foundations were built on terra firma rather than shifting sand. “At one stage, there was talk of closing the door and walking away from it,” admits Gareth, “but the current board did a fantastic job in getting all the creditors together and coming to an agreement, otherwise you’d have been looking at Rugby Netherlands 2.0. “The union was basically filing for bankruptcy so I had to pick up both roles,” continues Gareth, “which was extremely challenging but it was what it was and there weren’t too many other options and that’s when it all started really.”

Propped up by a donation from an anonymous sponsor, who “picked up the tab for six months”, Gareth and his small, hard-working team invested time and what limited resources they had in putting a framework together that allowed the country’s best young players to thrive. “We, as technical staff, were still able to keep building,” he explains. “We were quite proactive and got on with things although a lot of us had to do two to three different jobs.

“I remember having to wash the kit and clean the stadium after games; there was no job too big or too small for any of us.”

A National Training Centre (NTC) dedicated to high performance was established in Amsterdam, to complement the regional academies of which there had been just one, in the south-west, when Gareth originally took up his twin role. Today, there are six, located throughout the country.

As part of the NTC development, the old gym got a serious makeover. “One of the board members, Peter de Graaf, was hugely instrumental in the National Training Centre going ahead,” says Gareth. “Everyone concentrated on the rugby side of things, and not the financial side of things, and we pulled it off; it is a massive achievement.

“The gym we had, to paint a picture,” he continues, “was one of those seriously old ones where you had to have an Allen key on standby because the dumbbells were falling apart, things were taped together and what have you. Now the gym is right up there with the gyms we saw when we visited professional clubs to get advice. It is a world-class facility.”

The Netherlands returned to the second tier of European rugby in May this year. Facing a delayed play-off against Belgium, they won 23-21 and finally arrived back at the highest level outside of the closed cartel that is the Six Nations. Significantly, seventeen of the matchday 23, were born in the country with thirteen of them coming through the NTC. 

Gareth, however, wasn’t there to lead them, he’d departed for a life in farming having paved the way for the country’s success today. Instead, the coach was Zane Gardiner, a much-travelled Māori New Zealander. “Without Gareth, a lot of this wouldn’t have happened,” says Zane. “Gareth wanted to set up the NTC because he could see the academies were good. The players were training four times a week, plus their club training, but once they got to seventeen and went straight into senior rugby, they were down to training twice a week again.

“The clubs were against it at first because they didn’t see why they should release players to go to the NTC when they had invested in them and developed them.

“It was something new, and when that’s the case, people worry,” he continues. “There was a bit of a power struggle but he stayed strong because he could see there was a gap in the development of the players.

“What was happening was all academy kids were thinking, ‘there is nothing here for me, I’m going’,” says Zane. “You were getting some really good kids just taking what they could overseas, and that’s not always the best situation to develop rugby, especially when there was a lack of understanding of the semi-professional market.”

One player almost lost to the system was 25-year-old David Weersma, the hero of the Netherlands’ victory against Belgium. The goal-kicking inside centre contributed eighteen points, including the 78th-minute penalty that secured victory, sending their lowland rivals down to the third-tier Rugby Europe Trophy.

A member of the Dutch U17 squad coached by Zane, the hero of Waterloo – where the game had been played – had previously caught the eye in Wellington too. At a schools’ tournament in Somerset, he’d played well enough to spark interest from a number of English clubs, but, chasing the Super Rugby dream, he opted instead for a move to South Africa. When that didn’t work out, with the political situation not helping, he returned to Europe, by which time the doors to the English Premiership and France’s Top 14 had closed. Weersma spent two years in the lower leagues of France before a move to Spanish top-flight outfit Aparejadores Rugby in 2019 got him back on track and enjoying his rugby again.

“Coming from New Zealand, I know how the system works,” says Zane, a dual-code outside back in his day. “If you miss your window, that’s it, you’re gone. 

“Things could have been different had he (Weersma) stayed in Europe as a youngster. But those are the lessons you have to learn and a whole heap of them did that, they went to South Africa, because for Dutch players Super Rugby is more aligned to how we like to play the game. But, unfortunately, the whole political situation in South Africa is really tough.” 

Wellington-born Zane, still only 41, knows plenty of the world of rugby, having travelled a good chunk of it during his playing days. He toured with New Zealand Māori RL Sevens and played semi-professionally in the thirteen-man code for London Skolars, before moving to Scotland to play rugby union for Peebles and Stewart’s Melville RFC. This was followed by stints in Germany, Luxembourg and, significantly, the Netherlands, where he helped coach Haagsche Rugby Club (HRC) to the Ereklasse while also coaching Dutch international age-grade teams. Here, he first made contact with Gareth Gilbert.

Then, following wife Nicola’s teaching career this time, it was off to the United Arab Emirates to work for Apollo Perelini, and his first taste of international rugby with the Emirati national team.

After three years in Dubai, Zane reconnected with Gareth and successfully applied for a job at the NTC and the Dutch U20 head coach role, while also being invited to take charge of RC ‘t Gooi, who he subsequently led to the Ereklasse title – his second with different clubs. 

When Gareth decided to step down as head coach of the Netherlands, Zane threw his hat into the ring. “There were some good coaches that went for the job because there aren’t that many international coaching jobs going around the world that pay decent money,” he points out. “But the fact I was probably the only pathway coach to apply, who’d been through the system, that was a big selling point for me.”

Excited at the prospect of working once again with players like Weersma and winger Jordi Hop, who he’d coached at junior level, he’d initially planned to stay for two years. Those two years have turned into four and with a new contract signed off, and a newly-fitted kitchen just installed at home, it doesn’t appear he is in any hurry to leave just yet.

Player migration is an ongoing problem for the Netherlands, but it’s not a new one. Former Dutch captain Marc Visser’s son, Tim, won 31 caps – but for Scotland not the Netherlands, unlike his brother Sep, who donned the orange jersey 27 times. Others, such as lock Michael van der Loos, would have been good enough to contribute to the Dutch cause had they not played overseas, in his case with Bath, just before they became the dominant force in English rugby in the 1980s, and in Wales with Ebbw Vale and Cardiff and Narbonne in France. And the Netherlands only got four caps out of powerful flanker Zino Kieft, once a key figure for La Rochelle.

Of the present crop of talented Dutch players currently playing abroad, strapping young locks, Fabien Holland and Stan van den Hoven, are impressing in New Zealand, while another second-rower, Renger van Eerten, is playing his club rugby at Brive alongside ex-Dutch U20 captain and current national team No.8, Dave Koelman, a former Leicester Tigers player.

The likes of Holland however, are more likely to have an international future in black than orange. Zane, of course, would love for all of the best young players to be available to him, but he takes a phlegmatic view of the situation. “In an ideal world they would still want to be able to play for the Netherlands but we are realists,” he says. “If they made it all the way into All Blacks consideration, that is not something they could ever turn down. There is a lot of water to flow under the bridge in that respect but I see it as a win-win. If either of them became New Zealand players that would be fantastic reflected glory for Dutch rugby.”

Instead, they have to focus on producing more young talent. With the regional academies and the NTC now linking up the player development chain, action has been taken to bridge the gap between domestic club and Test rugby. 

The BENE Cup – contested by the top four teams in the Netherlands and Belgium – has served a purpose to some degree in the last few years, but it is the imminent arrival of the Rugby Europe Super Cup that is cause for excitement. Once that is up and running in September, it is hoped that the best domestic-based players will be dissuaded from moving overseas in search of more competitive rugby.

The Rugby Europe Super Cup features the unfortunately named Dutch team, The Delta, plus seven other teams from across the continent. It will serve as a vehicle for the best U23 players to get meaningful game-time against players from different countries who play different styles. The Ereklasse is fine for firm ground, running rugby but not as preparation for a forward slog in Siberia, for example.

The Delta find themselves in the Western Conference with The Brussels Devils (Belgium), Lusitanos (Portugal) and The Castilla y Leon Iberians (Spain), while the Eastern Conference is made up of teams from Georgia (The Black Lions), Israel (Tel Aviv Heat), and the two teams from the Russian Championship (Enisey-STM and Lokomotiv Penza).

Zane recognises what a positive step it is, for not only Netherlands rugby but European rugby beyond the Six Nations countries. “The Super Cup is going to help develop rugby in Europe,” he says. “It provides an opportunity to keep talented players in the country and provide them with quality games at a high level. 

“Franchise teams have proven to be successful around the world for developing players and this will be no different.”

The Rugby Europe Super Cup appears tailor-made for players like 21-year-old Wolf Van Dyk. “I don’t know if I will play in it or not yet but even if I am not, a lot of Dutch players will be, which will be really good for them, to play teams from other countries,” says Wolf. “So it is definitely a big step up for Dutch rugby.”

Wolf was there at the very start of what Gareth perceives to be the turning point in the fortunes of the Netherlands as a rugby nation, a 49-0 win away to Poland in the Rugby Europe Trophy in November 2018. A law student, Wolf made a try-scoring debut on that snowy day in Lublin and it dawned on the man who handed him his chance, that all the hard work of the past was starting to pay off and the stars were starting to align. “Before I took over the national team, we were begging people to play. We brought pride back into the shirt by ensuring we prepared properly,” reflects Gareth. 

“The players had to work hard to be given an opportunity and we started to get good numbers down (to training), wanting to take part. 

“We were often a team that would go up and down, and our goal was to stay in the Trophy and push for promotion and be consistent. 

“The first year we finished second behind Portugal, and for the next two seasons it was the same. But we had a lot of great performances in between and that Poland game was a fantastic moment, I think that’s when we started to realise what was possible. 

“A lot of older players were injured so we had quite a few youngers players in the team, and we thought this could go one of two ways.

“But the boys really put it out there and it was probably the closest I have come to a perfect game as a coach.

“Wolf made his international debut in that game; he is a phenomenal player.”

Unlike the perception of many of his countrymen, Wolf is every bit as fearsome as his name suggests. There is nothing nice about the way he plays the game. A product of Rugby Netherlands’ south-west academy, located in the cities of The Haag and Leiden, Wolf stepped into senior men’s rugby as a seventeen-year-old by joining reigning Ereklasse champions Rugby Club Diok.

Zane even compares him to Wallaby great, Michael Hooper, for his tenacity in the tackle and at the breakdown and his high work-rate. “He’s come through the academy, through his club and the NTC and into the men’s national team. He’s not the biggest guy but he’s all in,” he reckons. “If he gets into a professional programme, he’ll put on a few extra kgs and he’ll be as good as Michael Hooper. He has no fear and his pain tolerance is unbelievable.”

“Before the Belgium game, we watched the documentary about the American guy (Alex Honnold) who climbs mountains without ropes,” Zane explains. “He climbed El Capitano, a 3,000-metre granite face (in Yosemite National Park) with no ropes. If he slipped, he was dead.

“He gets his confidence from how meticulous he is in his preparation and I likened it to our players climbing the mountain of promotion to the Rugby Europe Championship, we called it ‘El Championship’.

“We had worked so hard to get our preparation right, we didn’t need any ropes to slow us down, and there was nothing to be afraid of.”

The ripple effect of the win is already being felt. “People want to be involved now,” explains Zane. “They like the way we play and there was a massive outpouring of joy and a lot of pride and my email inbox was fuller than it’s ever been. 

“We wanted to show our own country we are worthy of their support and we are a good team and we have some good players. 

“Yes, we have got a long way to go in terms of game IQ and understanding, but the boys worked really hard to put a performance out on the field that people could look at and say ‘man, those guys can play rugby’.”

The one common denominator between their Rugby Europe Championship opponents is that they have all played at a Rugby World Cup, whereas the Netherlands have not – at least not in men’s rugby. By competing in the Rugby Europe Championship, though, they have at least given themselves a shot at getting to play on the game’s biggest stage, as results from the next two years of the competition are used to determine the two automatic qualifying spots from the region.

They lost their first two matches of the season, to Georgia and Portugal, conceding just over 100 points along the way, but scoring 43 in the process, including six tries. When the competition resumes in November with a match against Romania, they will be bottom of the table but no longer the pushovers of the past.

“It is good to play against countries like Georgia because they play against countries like England and South Africa. It is important for us to keep learning and developing,” says Wolf. “To be honest, I don’t think the Trophy was good enough anymore because you knew in most games you were going to win unless you had the most unlucky day. The pressure is good for us.”

Rugby Journal has been given a copy of Rugby Netherlands’ Strategic Plan (2021-24) and among its many goals is for the women to qualify for Rugby World Cup 2025 and the men to do likewise in 2030. It is nine years and what must seem like a lifetime away for many of the current men’s national team but most, like Wolf, are young enough to still be in contention. “I would like to go to a World Cup one day, that would be awesome,” he admits.

The Belgium win has opened up big opportunities. “We are working really hard and we are under-staffed and it is coming at us really fast, but I keep saying to everyone that these are good problems to have because had we lost to Belgium, we wouldn’t have any of this,” says Zane. “We have just got to grind hard for the next six months to get everything on the same page and then I think it will be an exciting few years for Dutch rugby moving forward.”

What that future looks like remains to be seen but one man who is happy to be around again to see it all unfold is Gareth Gilbert. The 41-year-old has returned to coach his former club after realising how much he missed rugby, and the Netherlands, and is also acting as a sounding board for Zane. “Rugby is my passion and, for me, it does not feel like a job,” he says. “There are such huge opportunities on the horizon so when I got an offer from my old club, I thought ‘you know what, I am going to come back’.”

Reflecting on his decision to step down as Dutch boss, Gareth believes Rugby Netherlands couldn’t have picked a better person to continue his legacy. “I think the time was right for Zane to take over, especially with the youngsters he’s worked with for so long coming through,” he explains. “You can see what he has done with the team; he has taken it to a new level and I think it can only get better if you look at the talent coming through.

“In my club alone, we’ve got two youngsters who’ve got opportunities to work with Stade Francais Espoirs next season and our own pathway is starting to produce. 

“If you look at where we were to where we are today, we are starting to spit out some seriously talented rugby players. 

“To be a part of it is such an honour. Everyone wants champagne rugby on a beer budget but it seems to have worked out that way.” 

Words by: Jon Newcombe

Pictures by: Dennis Vandesande

This extract was taken from issue 15 of Rugby.
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