Joost van der Westhuizen

Joost van der Westhuizen (20 February 1971 – 6 February 2017) was a South African rugby union player who earned 89 test caps for the Springboks and scored 38 tries. He primarily played scrum-half and competed in three Rugby World Cups, including the 1995 tournament that South Africa won. He is considered one of the finest scrum-halves in rugby history. Van der Westhuizen captained the national team in ten tests and was a member of the side that secured South Africa’s first Tri-Nations title in 1998. At the provincial level, he played for the Blue Bulls from 1993 to 2003. In 2011, he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease and later used a wheelchair and experienced speech difficulties, but he worked to raise awareness of the condition through his J9 Foundation.

Born in Pretoria on 20 February 1971, he attended Hoërskool F.H. Odendaal and earned a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Pretoria. He played for the Junior Springboks in 1992. His entire provincial career was with the Blue Bulls, and he played Super 12 rugby for the Northern Bulls (later the Bulls) from the competition’s start in 1996 until his retirement in 2003. Despite standing 6 ft 2 in—unusually tall for a scrum-half—he was known for finding and exploiting tiny gaps in defenses.

Van der Westhuizen earned his first international cap at age 22 against Argentina in Buenos Aires during the 1993 tour. The following year, he scored two tries in a standout performance against Scotland at Murrayfield. In the 1995 Rugby World Cup final, South Africa faced New Zealand, who were favorites. Van der Westhuizen effectively marked All Blacks wing Jonah Lomu with several key tackles, including one just outside the 22-meter line.

In 1997, he captained South Africa’s Sevens team to the final of the Rugby World Cup Sevens in Hong Kong, where they lost to Fiji. He was part of the side that won the 1998 Tri-Nations, captained the Bulls to the 1998 Currie Cup, and first captained the Springboks in 1999, when South Africa finished third at the World Cup. After that tournament, he discovered a serious knee ligament injury sustained two weeks earlier. Injuries from international duty caused him to miss large parts of three consecutive Super 12 seasons in 1998, 1999, and 2000.

In November 2001, he became the first player to reach 100 appearances for the Springboks. Welsh club Newport RFC tried to sign him in 2001, but pressure to play domestic rugby in South Africa to remain eligible for national selection kept him there. His selection for the 2003 World Cup made him the first South African to play in three finals. The team lost to the All Blacks in the quarter-finals. He retired from international rugby in November 2003 as South Africa’s record test cap holder (89) and record test try scorer (38). In total, he made 111 appearances for South Africa, captained them in ten tests, and scored 190 points.

Van der Westhuizen was inducted into the International Rugby Hall of Fame in 2007 and became a member of the World Rugby Hall of Fame in 2015 when the two halls merged.

In his personal life, he divorced his wife of six years, Marlene, in 2001, shortly before marrying Amor Vittone, with whom he had two children. In February 2009, reports emerged of a video showing him engaged in sex play with a woman and snorting a white substance. Charmaine Weavers also claimed to have had an affair with him. His marriage to Vittone ended, and he lost his job as a television presenter with SuperSport. In June 2009, he was hospitalized with a suspected heart attack, but tests found no heart issues; a panic attack was suspected. On 1 November 2009, coinciding with the release of his autobiography Spieëlbeeld ("Man in the Mirror"), he confessed to being in the sex video and apologized for lying. In a 2013 interview, he said his actions went against his principles and that he had to make mistakes to learn about life.