Juandre's blog: Walk the talk

"If you train hard, you'll not only be hard, but you'll be hard to beat."

Firstly, congratulations to Pierre Spies for being selected as captain for the Vodacom Blue Bulls. Pierre is a fantastic leader and great friend.

We're halfway through our pre-season, and the standards being set at training are of the highest quality. By the way, if someone in Pretoria would like a challenge, go run Rose Avenue a few times - you don't get that many 800m hills around!

As I mentioned, training has been going very well, and I believe we have a great squad and a fantastic vibe within the squad. The squad will be well prepared for the start of Super Rugby. We also have two great mentors and coaches in Frans Ludeke and Heyneke Meyer, who both share the same vision - to make the Vodacom Blue Bulls a world class franchise. Right now, there is no better environment to be in for a player competing at the highest level and looking to achieve his goals.

The Blue Bulls are like family as can be seen by the many people getting behind Joost vd Westhuizen and the J9 fund. May he and the fund be blessed.

We're on Christmas break at the moment and we'll only start training again in early January. For now though, I'm looking forward to some family time in Cape Town, Hermanus and Yzerfontein. After that, I'm off to Barra Lodge in Mozambique to spend some quality time with Moniq Kruger, Werner Kruger, Flip van der Merwe, Jochen Grobler, Bok van Blerk, and Adolf Vorster.

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas, and may you all be blessed, travel safe and enjoy the holiday.

I would like to leave you with a few thoughts and quotes:

If you want to be number one, train like number two.

Never let your mistakes and bad habits be a resident, but rather a visitor.

Some people read history and some people make history.

Perseverance develops reliability.

"I don't dream at night, I dream all day; I dream for a living." - Steven Spielberg.