They don’t make movies about ordinary people.
Which is why they’ve made a movie of Joost van der Westhuizen.
I watched Glory Game on Wednesday with a heavy heart. The film is shot through with poignant moments in which Joost’s searing honesty that shines through. An uncomplicated guy with an unadorned background, he puts his ego aside to lift the lid on his devastating condition.
He suffers from motor neuron disease (also known as ALS), something one doctor on screen likens to slowly suffocating with your brain still active.
Joost broke the mould for scrumhalves. He was bigger, stronger and faster than any of his forebears. He was a magnificent physical specimen, all taut muscle and attitude. The irony is that this awful disease broken his body.
What remains of the old Joost is the relentless fighting spirit. So too the twinkle in his sparkling blue eyes. He’s always cheeky, ready with a joke. Even now, with time fast running out.
Some of the film’s best moments are when his rivals discuss him at a tribute dinner. The English bunch of Kyran Bracken, Matt Dawson and Andy Gomarsall are a riot, Bracken remarking at one stage, “South Africans are such big bastards, I dunno what they feed them.”
To a man, they bow to Joost’s eminence as a rugby player, easily among the top five or six to have represented the Springboks.
The Scottish legends, the Hastings brothers, also reaffirm rugby’s special brotherhood, as do George Gregan and Justin Marshall, Joost’s major southern hemisphere adversaries. The respect and empathy they demonstrate is tribute to the enduring rivalry between South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
Joost chatting at the premiere.
The film draws heavily from the people closest to Joost, chiefly his family and Dr Henry Kelbrick, the lifelong friend who first spotted something wasn’t quite right with his mate.
The real triumph of this film is that it is so unusual in the South African milieu. There are compelling narratives all around us, but there is a strange reluctance to tell our own stories. As harrowing as Joost’s story is, it demanded to be told. Thankfully it was.
We all know how this movie ends, so to speak, but what matters most is that Joost is still raging against the dying of the light, refusing to go quietly.
Glory Game is a fitting tribute to one of the game’s titans.