Neil de Bruin, the Blue Bulls’ attack coach, who joined the Pretoria side during a mid-season shake-up
Image: SUPPLIED
Neil de Bruin never planned to become a rugby coach.
Growing up, it was in fact the one thing he had been determined not to become.
And how then could it have been otherwise, when sport was ever-present at home, with his father coaching rugby and his mother netball?
“As a rebellious teen, literally the last thing I wanted to do was what my parents did,” said De Bruin, who grew up mainly in Durban, moved to Kimberley for high school, and was now living just south of Pretoria.
But the promise to himself to never end up on the other side of the white line was now sharply juxtaposed with where he finds himself today, calling the shots in the Blue Bulls’ attack.
De Bruin was appointed to the Bulls’ coaching staff in December, joining Johan Ackermann’s newly assembled team during a mid-season reset at Loftus Versfeld.
His arrival came as part of a wider shake-up meant to freshen up the Bulls’ attacking play after, depending on who you ask, an embarrassing run of results, with De Bruin given responsibility for the backline and attack.
After 10 rounds of the United Rugby Championship (URC), the Bulls find themselves inside the playoff spots at seventh on the table.
It is still a far cry from their previous performances in the URC, which have seen them qualify for three of the four finals of the competition since the introduction of South African teams.
The 39-year-old said becoming a coach almost happened by “accident”.
That “accident”, the father of three said, came while he was still playing, when he was asked to help out and thought nothing of it at the time.
It happened at College Rovers in Durban, when the head coach at the time, Robert du Preez, told him the second-team coach had not arrived and asked him to "quickly run the session".
De Bruin, who was still an active player and the team’s scrum-half, said the request left him “uhm, pleasantly surprised”.
“I said to him, ‘Geez, coach, what do you mean? I am still playing for you.
"I am your scrum-half so what exactly do you mean I need to go coach?’” De Bruin said.
He did it anyway, and it was love at first sight.
“That was probably in that moment when I realised, shit man, this is what I really wanted to do,” he said.
“It taught me wonderful humility and how to teach a fundamental concept to a player, whether it was a youngster or a seasoned campaigner."
His early coaching work included time at the Leopards, a smaller union that often had to take on teams with far bigger budgets.
The Leopards are based in North West and compete regularly against SA’s traditional powerhouse unions.
“We competed against the big six or the big eight unions at the time,” he said.
“We were one of the smaller groups, so we had to find a way to get the best out of our players and try to compete.”
That stint opened the door to the Lions, where he worked with the junior teams alongside Joey Mongalo.
Mongalo has previously worked with the Lions and Springbok Sevens as a coach.
Over three seasons, the pair coached the under-19s and under-21s to three junior provincial titles.
“We coached under-19s and under-21s for three years, and then we won three consecutive junior provincial tournaments in our first three years,” De Bruin said.
He later spent four years coaching in Japan, where he worked alongside Ackermann and Rory Duncan.
“You cannot go to Japan and live there for four years and not be changed in some way,” he said.
De Bruin and his wife, Candice, arrived in Japan without children and returned with two, with another on the way.
"So there was definitely a big change there," he said.
"The Lord has just unbelievably blessed us abundantly when we were there.
"It was so good.
"During Covid-19 [lockdown], when the country was closed, we got to experience Japan and its unbelievable sights... there was so much time, space, and freedom for us to roam around the country."
The language barrier forced him to change the way he coached.
“Simplicity is probably the key word that stood out from my time in Japan,” he said.
“We had to keep it really simple.”
Game plans were explained using pictures and diagrams instead of long, often boring speeches.
“A lot of the stuff was with images, just because the wording would get mistranslated and then lost,” he said.
There were also lighter moments.
Early on, players kept using a word he did not understand.
“I kept hearing ‘gaman, gaman, gaman’,” he said.
According to a quick Google search, it turns out the word means patience — something his players were politely telling him he needed more of.
“I only realised what it meant afterwards," he said.
After returning to SA, De Bruin spent a year in school rugby, running the full programme at Paarl Boys’ High School, before stepping back into professional coaching.
Now at Loftus Versfeld, the role he once tried to avoid had become his day-to-day job.
He said his first task was to “hear the gents out” and bring clarity.
"From the get-go, I wanted to listen first, listen to what the players were saying and listen to what Ackermann was saying," De Bruin said.
"I wanted to understand the heartbeat of the team before you just go in and pitch a plan and say 'listen guys, this is how we are going to do it’.
"It was a challenging time, personally as well, coming in in the middle of the season ... you do not have a pre-season where you can develop your principles of play and the way you coach and train."
He said it was a classic case of hitting the ground running and "trying to hold on and not fall off".
"But luckily the players were so receptive to the ideas and so positive towards me," he said.
"I am extremely grateful for that.
"Now it almost feels like home. It has been a month in the job and it feels like I have been there for years.”
De Bruin said he wanted the Bulls to have variety in their attack.
“If you’re a one-trick pony, these teams will figure you out, especially at this level,” he said.
“So you’ve got to keep the opposition guessing.
"If you want to play in different styles, you’ve got to be ultra-conditioned and you need to be adaptable, so you can go whichever route is needed to get the result on a particular weekend.
"We will under no circumstances be a one-trick pony.”
De Bruin said structure was important to him and helped keep things organised.
“For me, you need a form of structure, definitely," he said.
"Structure might be the wrong word — it is more organisation.
“That way everyone is on the same page, they see the same picture, and they know what is going on around them as an attacking team.
"If you are all over the place and it is just laissez-faire [the policy of leaving things to take their own course, without interfering], play-what-you-see, you will get good moments, but there will also be confusion.”
Away from the training field, De Bruin’s world is centred on his family.
He said Candice has been his everything, along with their three children, all under the age of four.
“It is pretty hectic at home now,” he said.
“But I have got an absolute champion of a wife ... my little family is my everything."
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