Back in 2013, the Netherlands Rugby Union was on its knees financially and the men’s national team languished in 35th place in the world rankings behind the likes of Poland and Lithuania. Rugby in the Lowlands country needed salvation.
Up stepped South African Gareth Gilbert, who as Rugby Nederlands’ new technical director, understood that a strategic plan for the future needed to be put in place that focused on a bottom-up approach, where the base of the player pyramid was widened to ultimately benefit the national team in the long term.
One academy became six, with rugby hubs based in different regions, and the next tranche of talented young players started to emerge. One being current Dutch international David Weersma.
Weersma is in the ninth year of his international career, having made his debut as a 19-year-old against Ukraine, and could yet witness what would easily be the greatest men’s rugby achievement in the football-mad country’s history.
The goal-kicking centre, who spent 10 years overseas playing club rugby in South Africa, France and Spain as well as in his homeland, has lived the Netherlands’ journey from no-hopers to a team ranked 24th in the world with real hope that a first appearance at a Rugby World Cup is within their sights. Beat Belgium to fifth place in the final round of the Rugby Europe Championship this weekend and a place at the Final Qualification Tournament for the 2027 World Cup will be theirs.
The 28-year-old’s man-of-the-match performance against Belgium in the 2021/22 promotion/relegation clash was key to helping them get to where they are now, in the Rugby Europe Championship.
Rugby Nederlands’ Strategic Plan 2021-24 outlined participating at the 2031 tournament in USA as their ultimate goal, but if the Lyn Jones-coached team beat Belgium in Amsterdam this Saturday, they’ll go to the World Cup repechage tournament in November with a fighting chance of making it all the way to Australia.
But with the canny Lyn Jones at the helm, no one inside the Dutch camp is getting ahead of themselves. “He has always been good at picking a few things he wants to work on and then going all out on that and making it clear what needs to happen, and this game is no different. It could create a lot of noise because there is a bit of extra pressure and extra reward if you do well, but he keeps us nice and level and focused on every training session,” said Weersma, who starts Saturday’s match in Amsterdam on the bench.
Jones has been to the World Cup before, with Russia in 2019, but the Netherlands haven’t. A 110-0 defeat to England in the 1999 qualifiers is about as close as they have come. Despite being part of the current generation, Weersma is very aware of that game in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. In the birthplace of rugby league, England could have won with 13 players, not 15, such was their dominance that day.
“That game has kind of mythical-like status in Holland,” Weersma revealed, “All the Dutch players who played are still like incredible legends over here. It is a really, really cool story.
“I’ve even heard stories about the 1987 World Cup, where you could apply to be involved or something. There are people are still around now who say they told the Union that they needed to apply for it, but, unfortunately, they got turned down.
“We are definitely closer now than in those days!”
Needless to say, Weersma, who works as a mind coach presenting to corporate clients, would love to make it to Australia.
“It’s the last personal goal I have in my career. I have a very strong sense of purpose in that sense,” he said.
“Luckily I just managed to be in a generation where this all started, I was the first generation of a rugby academy system that had never existed in Holland before and now it is part of a huge pathway into the national squad.
“I was lucky to be part of a national team where the players were happy to come to training and behave professionally whereas before they were just happy to get a fun trip away with the boys and wreck a hotel room here and there.
“There was always good coaching and a good group of boys who wanted to train and improve. So for that to accumulate into an accomplishment like that would be the perfect ending. It would prove so many people right but at the same time so many doubters wrong.
“If we could make that qualification tournament it would be huge confirmation of the good work that everyone has been putting into it and the sacrifices made this season, and the seasons before. To then put in a performance at the repechage and make it to the 2027, I will forever dedicate my presentations around that story,” he joked.
Saturday’s game is all about getting the job done, and the Dutch make no apologies for being the England of the Rugby Europe Championship. No team kicks the ball as much as them in the competition, and with the player who likes to kick the leather off the ball more than anyone, Vikas Meijer, selected at full-back instead of fly-half, it suggests that the Netherlands won’t be changing tack and running the ball back at will.
Weersma was brought up on a diet of French flair, his father having chosen to support Les Bleus in the 1990s and noughties, when the Dutch national team was in the doldrums. But he understands the message when it comes to the team’s conservative tactics.
“It’s very much Lyn-ball. There’s a method to the madness. When we first came into the REC we scored some beautiful tries but we were also most of the time beaten by 40, 50 or 60 points,” he pointed out.
“The way to turn that around is to start to become a team that is difficult to beat and then you can start edging results when it is still close after 60, 70 minutes. For that, you need a few big pillars to be in place, and those are a good territory game, a good set piece and a solid defence line. So we started working on that and bringing it down to those key points.
“On top of it, we sometimes score a beautiful try or two, when we’re in the right parts of the field, but he is really big on the more you play towards the opponent’s try line, the smaller the chance they are going to score against you.
“It will be no different this weekend against Belgium,” he added. “We know they will kick every penalty to the corner so as long as we can keep them in their half, we can afford to commit a mistake or two. It is a style of play that is not the best to watch, but teams have proven over and over again that it is a solid foundation from which you can build an attractive style of rugby but in a different part of the field.”
To get to this fifth-place shootout, the Dutch finished third in Pool A after putting defeats to Spain and Georgia behind them to beat Switzerland 73-0 in their final game, before recovering from a slow start against Germany in the fifth-place semi-final to win 38-9.
The concentrated format of the Rugby Europe Championship works in the Netherlands’ favour, as it enables the squad to maintain test match intensity rather than return to their clubs, largely in the part-time Dutch Ereklasse league, and lose momentum.
“It makes a world of difference,” admitted Weersma.
🇳🇱???????? 🇧🇪
Tomorrow afternoon we’ve got the Netherlands taking on Belgium for a place in the Final Qualification tournament to @rugbyworldcup !
📺Watch the drama unfold over on Rugby Europe TV pic.twitter.com/e3aUBJpOig
— Rugby Europe (@rugby_europe) March 14, 2025
“From the first game to now, there is visual communication to one and another, rather than to have to spell I out, and there is a lot more unison when it comes to the gameplan and clarity about that.
“There has been more time to talk about the detail of the games rather than before the Spain week, for example, when we only had three training sessions, where we had to paint pictures with a broad brush. Now the pillars are already in place and we can think about the details.”
Belgium’s big, bruising pack will do their best to best to send those pillars crashing to the floor by turning the game into a niggly arm-wrestle. The Lowlands derby might not be as fierce or historic as, say ‘Le Crunch’, but Weersma knows what’s coming. The last meeting between the teams, a 31-19 win for the Dutch in 2023, featured five yellow cards.
“Belgium as we see them, like to tempt you into that sort of game, they are a very physical side and they are very happy to stay at close quarters. They want to annoy you and draw you out of your comfort zone and tempt you into giving a penalty away because they know that anything within your own half, they’ll put into the 22 and start mauling, which is a strength of theirs.
“They are one of those sides that enjoy the dark arts, and we also have a few players who are susceptible to that type of play.
“This REC we have had our fair share of yellow cards again. I wouldn’t say it’s a weakness because Bakkies Botha made a career out of it – of being on the line – but there is definitely a time and a place for it.”
Weersma converted all four of the Netherlands’ tries against the appropriately named Black Devils the last time the teams met, but it’s his first encounter against their nearest rivals, the promotion/relegation decider in May 2022, that’s regarded as one of the best days in Dutch rugby history, the HRC player contributing 18 points, including the match-winning penalty in a 23-21 win.
“There are lots of times when I have missed an important kick, so that’s why I appreciate it on a personal level. But it was also during that whole Covid period, when the team stuck together for three-four months prep without any funding. We weren’t even sure that the game was going to go ahead for a long time,” he said.
“We created some pretty strong bonds as a group, so to get the result at the end of it, with a coach that put in so much, Zane Gardiner, was one of those fairytales in a sense.”
Now Weersma is hoping for another one.
