World Cup winner Faf de Klerk has vowed that winning rugby’s greatest prize won’t dull his appetite for Premiership glory with Sale.
South Africa’s pocket rocket did as much as any player to crush England’s Final dream in Japan back in November and has been lauded by his country ever since.
But with club rugby due to start up again next month and Sale having signalled their intentions by signing Manu Tuilagi, De Klerk knows he has to prove himself all over again.
“I don’t want to go from winning a World Cup and then be just a good player,” said the scrum-half. “There are still a lot of goals I want to reach. I want to still try to be one of the best.
“Winning a World Cup brings with it an expectation every time you take to the field. You can’t rest on your laurels and think that now you’ve achieved everything.
“You have a target on your back, people have their eye on you.
“If you slack off and don't everything you can in training to prepare, people are going to start saying stuff like ‘he’s just won a World Cup, he’s comfortable’. I never want to be in that discussion.”
Sale lie five points off top spot in the Premiership with leaders Exeter to visit their place second game back.
The club, for so long considered unfashionable and indeed happy to use that perceived slur to drive them, now have a spanking new training facility and a squad which is the envy of the league.
“Manu’s signing is great statement of intent by the club,” said De Klerk. “The owners and (team boss Steve Diamond) Dimes have put a group together now that can consistently do well. Signings like his tell you we mean business.
“It’s still up to the players to pitch up on game day but we’ve got this dream that we want to be one of the best Prem sides and I think we’re getting close to that.”
For De Klerk there is the additional incentive of wanting to stay in the limelight to gain selection for next summer’s British and Irish Lions Test series back home.
As a schoolboy he watched the Lions visit his homeland in 2009, dreaming that one day his chance might come.
“A World Cup comes around every four years, a Lions tour to South Africa only once every 12,” he said. “To have that opportunity to be a part of it would be a once in a lifetime opportunity.
“None of us that were in that World Cup final expect to just walk into the side. If we want to be there we’re going to have to show we deserve such an immense honour.”
Faf de Klerk is an ambassador for Sale Sharks' commercial partner iPro.
