Harlequins honours Dolf van Huyssteen
The well-known rugby administrator and former president of the Blue Bulls Rugby Union, Dolf van Huyssteen, has recently been honoured by Harlequins Sport Club in a special way.
The Harlequins Sports Club honoured one of its most popular past chairmen recently. Dolf van Huyssteen was honoured in the presence of his wife, seven of his eight children and 40 selected guests.
His wife, Karen, a sports personality who made a name for herself on the hockey field and as an administrator, and currently a top golf administrator.
Van Huyssteen’s career as a rugby administrator is remarkable due to the fact that he really started at the bottom at club level and ended in the top rung at provincial level. He joined the Harlequins in 1984 as coach of the under 9 team and 16 years later he was elected president of the Blue Bulls Rugby Union.
This 74 year old native of Ermelo in the erstwhile Highveld has been a Pretorian since his student days at Tukkies.
As a successful civil engineer in the city his business partner invited him to Harlequins after his boys wanted to get involved in rugby at the youth club.
In this way, Van Huyssteen and his entire family’s involvement in sport at club level began. While his five sons all played rugby at different levels for Harlequins and his wife and daughters were involved in Harlequins’ hockey teams, he himself grew steadily in stature as a rugby administrator.
In 1991 he became chairman of youth rugby at the club and in 1994 he was elected chairman of Harlequins. And by 1999 he was elected deputy president of the union.
In 2001 he became president of the Blue Bulls in a very difficult and turbulent period during which the union reached an overall low.
But Van Huyssteen was the right man at the right time and he had firmly grasped the reins to get the union back on track.
When he handed over the helm in 2005 to take up a position at SA Rugby, the Blue Bulls had just been the Currie Cup champion for three consecutive years and the Bulls was the country’s top Super Rugby team and the only local team to play in the semi-final of this competition. Van Huyssteen’s career as a top rugby administrator has also coincided with the start of the professional era and during this time his experience as a successful businessman was invaluable for the sport at provincial and national level.
He was one of the first directors of SA Rugby (Pty) Ltd who had to get the professional leg of the sport at national level on the right track. In his speech after receiving the award, Van Huyssteen praised the support of his fellow members and colleagues at Harlequins during his career as a sports administrator.
In lighter vein he said that he was initially wary to join Harlequins, because he thought that he as an Afrikaner would not fit in at the club with its reputation as a club with English traditions. Today he is grateful for his choice and regards Harlequins as a second home for his whole family.
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