Brendan Venter says only Saracens could make him leave the job he loves as a doctor to return full-time to rugby.
The former Springbok centre will step back into the director of rugby role at the English Premiership club later this year, ending a carefully balanced chapter in which he combined elite rugby coaching with running a GP practice in the Western Cape.
Venter, who established his Strand medical practice in 2001, told The Telegraph that the decision was never going to be an easy one.
He first told club owner Dominic Silvester: “I’m unbelievably settled. I love my work as a doctor. I don’t like my work. I love my work. It gives me energy.”
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The call only became unavoidable when long-time friend and colleague Mark McCall decided to step down after 17 years at the helm.
“The message from Mark said ‘It is done now. I have decided,’” Venter said. “He just said to me: ‘I’m tired.’”
Venter made it clear his return hinged on McCall staying involved.
“I told him that if my wife says it is fine, then we can go, but I told him that he had to stay on as my technical director.
“Mark is, in my opinion, the most successful rugby union coach ever. Who has been in place for 17 years? Rugby doesn’t work like that.”
Silvester went further to secure continuity.
“I’m not only going to keep Mark as your technical director, but he must join our board,” he told Venter.
Venter explained: “The only reason I’m really doing this is because Mark needs a solution, and Dominic needs a solution. That is the bottom line in the end.
“Dominic’s a friend, and he has been kind to me in a lot of ways. The same with Mark, he’s been kind to me. We are friends, this is a problem, and this solves both people’s problem.”
WATCH: Venter’s famous interview
Unlike his first stint in 2009-10, Venter’s focus will be on “fine-tuning” not rebuilding, and achieving greater consistency.
“We are a good rugby side,” said Venter, who has continued to work for Saracens over the past 15 years on a consulting basis, coming over to London four or five times a year.
“I said to the boys in my talk today, that the reality is we are good but we must find a way of being consistent. I watched us play against Leicester last year in a big game at the end of the season. We needed to win, and we were brilliant. We were intense, we were physical. And that is what we are. That is Saracens, we are hard to play against. We are difficult. That is my vision for the group, to be that the whole time.
“While I’m walking to my practice, every day, I ask God to grant me the wisdom and kindness to be a good doctor today, every day. When I go there, it doesn’t matter what happened in my day, whether I had a couple of hiccups. I must go and be a good doctor because the standard I have there has to be very good. Being OK is not OK. It is the same thing here. It is a life philosophy.
“If we’re going to do something, do it really well. We’re not going to get every outcome in life. That’s just the way the world is. But let’s go for it and rectify if there is a problem. But if they use words like, ‘I wasn’t up for it today’, that is absolute bulls**t. We will always be up for it. We will always go for it. If something goes wrong, it was not because we weren’t up for it. It was something else, and then we’ll fix it, and then we go again. And that’s just the way life works.”
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