The Aussie Super Rugby coach who taught Matt Damon to tackle

Coaching the Melbourne Rebels can be a Herculean task, but Kevin Foote has experience in handling big roles.

Like the day in 2008 when the former South African sevens captain got a phone call about a Hollywood movie due to be filmed in Cape Town. There was a job offer attached.

Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman in Invictus, with Kevin Foote (inset)

“I got a call, and they said we have this rugby movie coming in to film, and Matt Damon needs a body double. I thought, ‘This is a joke’, you know?” Foote said.

The movie was Invictus, a Clint Eastwood-directed film about Nelson Mandela and the Springboks’ inspiring World Cup win in 1995. Damon played Boks captain Francois Pienaar and Morgan Freeman played Mandela. He has a less cover up top these days, but Foote was blond-haired and passable for Damon and Pienaar.

“I went along and there’s Matt Damon, Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood, and they said, ‘Can you teach Matt to tackle?’,” Foote said.

“Man, he was balls-out. He was trying to chop everything, he wasn’t very effective but he was going hard. Just a great, humble guy. Not big at all.”

Kevin Foote tackling a French opponent while playing as captain of South Africa’s sevens team in 2004.Credit: Getty

Damon’s 1.78m stature famously didn’t marry up to that of 1.91m Pienaar, nor the similarly tall Foote. And after a few days of rugby education, someone shorter replaced Foote as the Damon body-double.

It now serves as a good party story for Foote, but even with some ‘cringy bits’ in the on-field action, the theme of Invictus - how rugby helped unite a country in the post-apartheid era - is something Foote has held on to in his new life as a rugby coach.

“The emotion of that game and what it did for the country, it was a very special time to be alive,” Foote said.

“The main thing it did, it united people across different cultures. And there is where I am trying to go with the culture here in Melbourne. We have guys from all over the place, many different backgrounds and cultures. But if you can merge cultures and identities, it is very powerful.”

The Fijian Drua claimed their first ever win in Super Rugby over the Rebels in round three.Credit: Getty

Did we mention big challenges? Foote is in his first season as a Super Rugby head coach, after taking over from good friend Dave Wessels, and the Rebels take on the Waratahs at the SCG on Saturday night desperately seeking a win after starting the year 0-4.

As former school coaching rivals, and university co-coaches, back in Cape Town, Foote was an assistant to Wessels at the Force and joined him in Melbourne in 2018 when the WA franchise lost its licence. When a burned-out Wessels elected to move home last year, Foote stepped into the hotseat.

“We are really close still, we message often, I care for him greatly. I miss him,” Foote said. “He wasn’t the happiest at the end but we had some great memories and he is a great dude.”

Kevin Foote served as an assistant to Dave Wessels before taking over the head role.Credit: Getty

Foote’s big focuses were on culture and, drawing from his sevens background, a new high-skill game-style that broke out of the Rebels’ structured approach. But as the season rolled around, the Rebels lost many of their Wallabies to injury and immediately exposed the club’s big weakness - shallow depth.

“The game model I am keen to keep building on is a fast, fearless, resolute game. I know you will look at it now and go ‘I don’t really see it’ but I do believe with the right cattle and confidence, we will definitely start to move to that,” he said.

“Unfortunately injuries early in the season to some of our senior Wallabies guys - not making excuses - but it definitely put a dampener on how we wanted to play. We are more structured now than I would have hoped, given that in the past the Rebels have been quite a structured team.

“That’s not really the way I like to play, I have a sevens background. I am more fearless in some of that stuff but I am also trying to meet the team in where they are at.”

New coaches are normally given some leeway on results as they rebuild but the Rebels winless start has seen talk re-emerge about the long-term viability of the franchise. It survived ahead of the Force when Rugby Australia decided to move to four teams in 2017, but that would be a different debate now.

Having gone through the Force axing, Foote knows the damaging potential of such chatter said he is lucky to have a strong Rebels front-office and board.

“That noise, I have been around it at the Force, and you start to feel a bit nervous, and it doesn’t help anyone, to be honest,” Foote said.

“When you start doubting and hearing external stuff, it can creep into your confidence as a coach and the players are watching you all the time.”

With key Wallabies now back on deck, Foote said he is hopeful the tide will begin to turn and the new game style can be implemented better. And, just as the Waratahs have discovered, one win can bring the self-fulfilling belief and confidence.

“No one likes losing, but the main thing is that you learn from them,” he said.

“If you are losing and not learning, it can be quite dark. I read the Chiefs coach say after they beat the Crusaders the other day, we lost 11 in a row [in 2021] and people said, ‘Worst team ever’, but we learned from every loss, and we built on every lesson, and went on to beat the Crusaders.”

Watch every match of the Six Nations and Super Rugby Pacific on the Home of Rugby, Stan Sport. Super Rugby Pacific continues this weekend with Brumbies v Reds (Friday 7pm AEDT), Fijian Drua v Force (Saturday 2:00pm AEDT) and Waratahs v Rebels (Saturday 7:00pm AEDT). All streaming ad-free, live and on demand only on Stan Sport.