As the excitement builds around the Boks’ World Cup defence, SA Rugby magazine celebrates PR guru Annelee Murray and her incredible experience with the national team.
The Springboks public relations manager for over 20 years, Murray worked with seven national coaches, 248 players and 21 Bok captains, and her book, The First Lady of Springbok Rugby, is filled with amazing anecdotes, incredible insights and moving tributes from South Africa’s Test centurions.
Murray was the go-to person on all things related to the Boks outside the actual playing of Tests, a sentiment shared by those who captained South Africa during her long association with the team.
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She has two World Cup winner’s medals, but it is the countless memories that define her journey with South African rugby supporters’ favourite sons. She has experienced the good, the bad and the ugly, but her journey is a celebration of Bok rugby.
Many among the Boks affectionately call her the ‘mother of the Springboks’ because of her protective nature and unconditional love and support of the players, and because of her competency and ability to get any job done.
But she was also the First Lady of the Springboks and a pioneer in the previously exclusive male-dominated Springbok management teams.
Murray gives the reader an insight into her life with the Springboks that goes beyond the 80 minutes of a Test match and leaves one with a sense of having been on the journey with her that included five World Cup tournaments and six Test centurions, and every one of these living legends has complemented her words with a tribute of their own, in a book that will make your understanding of and love for the Springboks even greater.
Photo: Duif du Toit/Gallo Images