I didn’t expect a man who makes a living off of basically getting into tussles with other men would be so nice, but that’s exactly what JP du Plessis was… really, really nice. The Cape Town, South Africa-born rugby captain recently signed on with local team NOLA Gold Rugby until 2026, so when I caught up with him I wanted to see how the Big Easy was treating him.
Q: What’s the best part about being a rugby player? Competing. I’m a competitor, I love to compete. Specifically, as I say to my wife, I’m 32 at the moment, and I’m dreading the day that I’ve got to hang up the boots, hopefully not for the while, at least for the next three years. But absolutely, I think it’s for me to compete. And then apart from that, it’s building the friendships within my team and with within the rugby community, even some of our best friends play for the opposing teams. While you’re playing, you’re competing and you’re having a crack at each other, but afterwards you’re having a beer or whatever, and it’s a socializer. Again, it’s just such a beautiful community within rugby. That’s the hardest thing about thinking about retirement is that you’d be missing that. Combined with being competitive.
Q: You were in San Diego before coming to New Orleans, but from South Africa to New Orleans I assume would be a big culture change for you and your family? San Diego is very much like Cape Town, but the culture in Louisiana is a lot more like us, so we’ve been we’ve been extremely, extremely happy. My family, we’ve settled in so nicely, we’ve made really good friends. The club has been unbelievable since the first year 2021. They took me and my family under their wing and let us settle in seamlessly. It’s been really amazing. We actually just bought a home four months ago. Yeah, so we’re looking at staying more permanently.
Q: What would you tell someone about rugby to get them excited to go to a NOLA Gold game? I think it’s nonstop action. What I’ve picked up is that Americans do love contact sport. Rugby is very much a contact sport…without the pads. It’s an extremely interesting sport; very intriguing sport. And it’s nonstop action, so that really makes it interesting. As more and more people are starting to understand the rules, I think it’s going to be extremely interesting to watch. We can already see a massive growth from the first year to this year. [Additionally for the fans] we start with a tailgating [event] beforehand with bands and food trucks. Then, before the game, we have fans on the field interacting with the players as we warm up. After the games there are fireworks and every fan is invited to a rugby social. There’s a place for everyone in the stadium.
Q: Tell me a little about the youth rugby initiative you’re involved with. It’s amazing to see kids starting to play more and more, and starting to understand the game. It’s such an unbelievable game. It’s all flag rugby that they play, so it’s just teaching them the basic skills and rules about rugby – passing, running, shifting the ball to space – so that that next transition when they actually walk into the next level of rugby, they already have the basics and the foundation. At the moment, we are reaching out to a lot of schools, clubs, and getting personally involved in coaching and getting involved with the kids as well. They love it, so it’s amazing. We’ve also been in touch with three or four schools in Jefferson Parish to get rugby into the PE curriculum.
Schools can sign up for through Nola Gold. We provide flags, balls, everything and we provide a player to go out and help do this one-on-one coaching with the PE teachers. They also get a guide handbook to kind of know the sport, learn the basic things and then our players will actually go back once they’ve embedded the curriculum into one of their teaching modules, wherever that falls in their season of sports, and do a one on one at the school where these kids are learning this now.
True Confession: I love to go fishing!
Favorite café: French Truck! I’m a big coffee lover and that’s my favorite hangout spot.
Favorite parade or Carnival activity: Last year we loved being on St. Charles, this year living on the north shore, we’re excited to explore the parades over there.
