Burger: 'I have never seen myself as a dirty player'
Writing in the Indenpendent on Sunday, Richard Wilson probes the two sides of Springboks flanker Schalk Burger.
"There is a profound separation in his life, the certain distinction between that looming, grimacing presence on the rugby field – when it seems as though that 6ft 4in frame is the very essence of all our distilled rage – and the insouciant, almost languid figure off the pitch. Burger, of course, is not the first performer to be so utterly transformed in taking to the field, and sport is nothing if not a means to reimagine so much of yourself.
"But then how do we reconcile the man who is so generously polite, whose voice is so soft and gentle that it lilts so soothingly, with the flanker who showed such callous disregard for the ethics of his sport when he appeared to gouge Luke Fitzgerald's eye in the second Lions Test in Pretoria last June? Maybe we can only accept that Burger, too, still strives to resolve these two aspects of his character."
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