Former Melbourne Rebels and UCT Ikeys head coach Kevin Foote is back home in South Africa after 11 years abroad. The 45-year-old South African coach and also former South African Sevens captain has been brought back to South Africa by SA rugby as the newly appointed Junior Springboks head coach.
Foote is looking forward to making a huge difference, a positive impact and sees it as a great challenge for himself. He comes with plenty of experience, vast knowledge and intellect, which will hopefully serve him well during his course as head coach. Foote himself is no stranger at all to South African Rugby.
He coached the UCT Ikeys side back in 2011 to 2013 and did this successfully by leading them to their first ever Varsity Cup Title. This was an outstanding achievement that set the path for him and his coaching career. After that spell with UCT Ikeys, he then decided to move overseas to Australia from 2013 to 2024, where he had stints with the Western Force in Perth as an assistant coach, co-head coach at the Perth Spirit and finally followed this up with the head coach role at the Melbourne Rebels.
The Past 2 years have seen some really mixed results for the Junior Springboks. In 2023 the Junior Springboks ended in up 3 rd position at the Junior Rugby World Championship held in South Africa. Then earlier in this year in June/July, the Junior Springboks ended in a disappointing 7 th position, once again it was held in South Africa. To be frank and honest there needs to be a big improvement in all departments and new structures must be put in place. Kevin Foote and his new coaching team are tasked with this exactly and will need to put some pride back in the jersey. Their ultimate objective must be to get them back to winning ways and being in the top 2 or 3 positions in World Rugby. Furthermore, the young talent that is coming through must be nurtured, developed and looked after. In the bigger picture of things, the next pipeline of players must also be groomed for higher honors with the senior side -The Springboks.
In an exclusive interview with Telecom Asia, Coach Kevin spoke about how extremely grateful he is, to be working with the young talent in South Africa.
To come home to South Africa it’s very special and from a personal point of you- for my family it’s closer to the grandparents, cousins, mothers and fathers and it’s very nice. It’s just so positive around me with the rugby environment again and so I just feel happy, if you had told me probably 12 months ago I would be back in South Africa, I would not have thought that and that is just life you know. As I said to the boys inside it’s better to be prepared without an opportunity than to have an opportunity and not be prepared, so I feel prepared to do well with this squad.
Coach Kevin then was asked about the goals and objective for his junior Springboks Team and how he plans to turn around things.
I will be straight up with you as South Africans we will never say we don’t want to win, it’s in our DNA, we have got fight and rugby is such a big part of us and we definitely want do well and play in finals and you know as far as possibly as we can go and at the same time I think this age group needs a lot of support and we want to make sure we developing them as people , as well as rugby players - so there is whole holistic side of it that we want to take care of but of course when it comes to Rugby in South Africa we want to be winning.
We want to get the right people on the bus, our recruitment, we got two weeks to run camps and we will make sure we will get the selection right. People are really passionate about playing for South Africa and obviously we have plenty of talented guys and we have an unbelievable squad system in South Africa don’t we? and we need to make sure we capitalize on that and we want to make sure we develop these players.
And then coach Kevin, was asked for any message for aspiring rugby players we want to play for Junior springboks or for any inspiring words for rugby players out there.
I think it’s more for us to inspire them you know and they have just got to keep playing their schoolboy rugby, playing their club rugby and making sure they play with a lot of passion and you know when they see us play (Junior Springboks), this is the team they want to play for (The Junior Springboks) and I think coach Rassie Erasmus has done that well with the senior side (The Springboks) and we want to do that with the Junior Springboks as well.
All in all, for the Junior Springboks to do well under Coach Kevin and to become a champion side, they will have to do the basics very well, have good structures in place and they will need to select the best players and in their correct positions as well. More importantly the coaching staff will need to install a great sense belief, mental toughness and continue with the typical Springbok DNA.
