Nico

Nico Lamprecht is a 67 year old Durban local of Afrikaans descent.  He approached me in the lobby of the Beach Hotel in Durban after seeing the tour t-shirts, and said that he’d be interested to talk, as he had been involved in South African water polo, including coaching and teaching at Durban High School for 25 years.

 

When I met him a few days later, joined for part of the time by James and later Ben, he turned out to be a fascinating guy – maybe not so surprising when later Brad Rowe, the Clifton coach, described him as “the godfather of South African water polo”.

 

Nico is close to finishing writing a book on the history of South African water polo, starting with the first “league game” in South Africa, which was unbelievably in 1898, running through to the 100^th running of the national provincial competition which has the same name and the same benefactor as their much better known national rugby competition, the Currie Cup. 

 

He talked about his experiences taking Natal teams on tours to Hungary, and educated me about the origins of water polo which were, according to him, in the mid 19^th century when Englishmen tried to replicate the horse polo game by playing with a ball while sitting on barrels in the pool.  The barrels soon disappeared, as did the concept of standing on the bottom, and today’s swimming game was founded.

 

He wanted to give the school a copy of another book he had written, a history of rugby at Durban High School.  Ben received the book on the school’s behalf and reciprocated with a school tie.  Nico was chuffed to receive it - the Grammar colours are identical to Durban High School’s.

 

He had also spent five years in the Intelligence division of the South African police (spying I would understand that to be) but he didn’t want to tell us stories about that . . .  He was a very interesting man.

 

Bill