Mike Tindall: I threatened to leave Bath because of Springboks star, I disliked him that much

Mike Tindall has admitted that his off-field relationships with Springboks players were just as fraught as they were on the pitch during the early part of his career.

The former England captain locked horns with South Africa several times and generally had the better of the battle.

Some of those duels were ferocious, including the infamous 2002 clash when the Springboks were slammed for their thuggishness in a 53-3 defeat, which saw Jannes Labuschagne red-carded for a late hit on Jonny Wilkinson.

That behaviour did not endear the Boks to Tindall who, when asked on The Good, The Bad and The Rugby podcast how the relationship was when they stepped off the field, said: “Not great, not in my experience.”

That has very much changed for Tindall since then, however, with the 47-year-old stating: “Whereas now I would class some South African players as my favourite guys off the field.”

Robbie Fleck hate

One of the former Springboks he despised off the back of that 2002 clash was Robbie Fleck, but he now counts him as a good friend.

“My friendship group is slightly later, more with that 2010 ilk, your John Smit’s, your [Schalk] Burger’s and Robbie Fleck, but I hated Robbie Fleck to start off with,” he said.

“I really disliked him off the back of that 2002 game, which was just a bloodbath really, where he said some things I didn’t really appreciate and then he suddenly came to Bath.”

Such was Tindall’s contempt for Fleck that he initially did not want to be at the same club as the South African when there was talk of him joining Bath.

“I basically threatened to leave if they signed Robbie Fleck; it was that bad – I disliked him that much at the time,” he said.

“It was like, ‘Okay we’ll think about it’, and then they just told me they had signed him and I was stuck with it.

“He then ended up becoming one of my closest mates.

“I told him immediately when he got there, and he apologised, and he just explained the situation of the game and everything else and how he lost his head.”

Tindall added: “I then got to play with him and I saw what happened to him on the field, and how he gets red mist and goes absolutely doolally.

“I was on the other side trying to control him and make him focus on the rugby while he’s trying to chase someone around the field.

“If you watched him for two minutes chasing someone around the field, he didn’t give a s*** about the rugby that was going on. But when he was on, he was an incredible player.

“Now he’s become a friend who I enjoy catching up with all the time.”

England’s tour to South Africa in 2000

Tindall suggested that he did not have a chance to build friendships with any of the South Africans due to England’s tour to the Republic in 2000.

Having based themselves in Johannesburg throughout, they did not spend much time in any of the places they played in before returning to the city.

“I think I had a different journey to some of my peers in our team. I had just turned 21 when I played them for that first time in the summer of 2000,” he said.

“We had taken the option to stay in the same place, so we stayed in Joburg the whole thing, and we jumped out to the games.

“We had three midweek games and two Test matches, so you weren’t really hanging around after games.

“We lost that first Test and I think I’m right in saying Stimmo [Tim Stimpson] had a try disallowed that would have won us the game, and it was brutal.

“You talk about doing the same things week in week out, but [head coach] Clive [Woodward] for the first time ever – we basically did nothing for the whole week because we were so physically f****d – actually listened and it was all about getting energy to go again, and keeping that frustration we had the week before.

“The midweek team had a massive tear-up on the Wednesday night, which reinvigorated what we were in for on the weekend, and then we went out and won that game.

“We then went straight back to [Johannesburg], so we didn’t really have any opportunity to mix.”

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