MY DAD TOOK SOME PERSUADING

Samantha Els is relishing her Bok call-up but says her father Ernie wasn't wild about her playing rugby at first  

- RICHARD VAN RENSBURG

SHE’S nursing a few bruises as wel l as some scratches around her right eye – but it’s no big deal for Samantha Els. Anyone who plays rugby knows that bumps and scrapes come with the territory.

It’s a far cry from the rather more sedate game of golf that made her father, Ernie Els, a household name but Samantha loves being right in the thick of all the rough and tumble.

When the Springbok women’s rugby team ran out recently for their encounter against US club team San Clemente Rhinos, all eyes were on the energetic blonde lock who was making her debut.

“It was my first game as a professional player,” Samantha (24) says, chatting to YOU at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town. “I learnt a lot. I mean, I actually only started playing rugby in 2018.”

The Boks beat the Rhinos 22-17, but they earned three yellow cards in the process – and Samantha was one of the players to be penalised.

“At least I can say it’s only my second yellow card in my entire career,” she says with a chuckle.

Until now she was a club player for New York Rugby, but was invited by the Springbok women’s coach, former flyhalf Louis Koen, to attend training camps with the Boks in preparation for this month’s WXV2 women’s rugby series. It’s an international competition that is a prelude to the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup.

“I’m new blood,” says Samantha, who is still based in the US but is in South Africa for the training camps. “At the moment I’m like a sponge, I’m learning everything I can.”