Marcell Cornelius Coetzee (born 8 May 1991) is a South African professional rugby union player who is the captain for South African side the in the

United Rugby Championship The United Rugby Championship (URC) is an annual rugby union competition involving professional teams from Ireland, Italy, Scotland, South Africa, and Wales. For sponsorship reasons the league is known as the Vodacom United Rugby Championship in ...

. He plays as a flanker.

South Africa

Coetzee made his debut in

Super Rugby Super Rugby is a men's professional rugby union club competition involving teams from Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. It has previously included teams from Argentina, Japan, and South Africa. Super Rugby started as the S ...

for the

Sharks Sharks are a group of elasmobranch cartilaginous fish characterized by a ribless endoskeleton, dermal denticles, five to seven gill slits on each side, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. Modern sharks are classified within the ...

against the

Brumbies The ACT Brumbies (known from 2005 to 2022 as simply the Brumbies) is an Australian professional rugby union team based in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory (ACT), The team competes in Super Rugby and named for the feral horses which inh ...

on Saturday 7 May 2011. He has offloading skills that have been likened to those of

Sonny Bill Williams Sonny William Williams (born 3 August 1985) is a New Zealand heavyweight boxer, and a former professional rugby league and rugby union player. He is only the second person to represent New Zealand in rugby union after first playing for the cou ...

Heyneke Meyer Heyneke Meyer (born 6 October 1967) is a professional rugby union coach, best known for coaching the Springboks from 2012 until 2015. Prior to coaching the Springboks, he spent many years at the domestic level in South Africa before coaching L ...

Springboks The South Africa national rugby union team, commonly known as the Springboks (colloquially the Boks, Bokke or Amabhokobhoko) is the country's national team governed by the South African Rugby Union. The Springboks play in green and gold jersey ...

coach, included him in the national squad to face

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

in a test series where Coetzee made his Springbok test debut on 9 June 2012 in

Durban Durban ( ; , from meaning "bay, lagoon") is the third-most populous city in South Africa, after Johannesburg and Cape Town, and the largest city in the Provinces of South Africa, province of KwaZulu-Natal. Situated on the east coast of South ...

Top League

Coetzee joined

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

ese

Top League Japan Rugby League One (), formerly known as the Top League (), is a rugby union competition in Japan. It is the highest level of professional rugby competition in the country. The Japan Rugby Football Union created the competition in 2003, by ...

side Honda Heat for the 2015–2016 season.

Ulster Rugby

In February 2016, it was announced that he would join Irish

Pro12 The United Rugby Championship (URC) is an annual rugby union competition involving professional teams from Ireland, Italy, Scotland, South Africa, and Wales. For sponsorship reasons the league is known as the Vodacom United Rugby Championship in ...

side

Ulster Ulster (; or ; or ''Ulster'') is one of the four traditional or historic provinces of Ireland, Irish provinces. It is made up of nine Counties of Ireland, counties: six of these constitute Northern Ireland (a part of the United Kingdom); t ...

on a three-year deal starting in the 2016–2017 season. Coetzee featured sparingly in his first two seasons with Ulster, due to recurring knee injury problems.Ulster flanker Marcell Coetzee ruled out for nine months, BBC Sport, 13 October 2017. Coetzee was the 2020–21 joint top try-scorer (9) and the 2020–21 Pro14 Players' Player of the Season in his final season with Ulster.

Return to South Africa

In December 2020 the Bulls confirmed that Coetzee would join the franchise in June 2021 on a three-year deal.

Honours

* Currie Cup winner

2021 Like the year 2020, 2021 was also heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the emergence of multiple Variants of SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 variants. The major global rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, which began at the end of 2020, continued ...

* Pro14 Rainbow Cup runner-up

* United Rugby Championship runner-up 2021–22 * Players' Player of the Season Guinness PRO14 2020–21 * Top try scorer United Rugby Championship 2020–21, 2021–22 * Selected in the United Rugby Championship "Dream Team" 2020–21, 2021–22

Springbok statistics

Test Match Record

Pld = Games Played, W = Games Won, D = Games Drawn, L = Games Lost, Tri = Tries Scored, Con = Conversions, Pen = Penalties, DG = Drop Goals, Pts = Points Scored

International Tries

References

External links

*
Sharks Profile
1991 births Living people Afrikaner people Blue Bulls players Bulls (rugby union) players Expatriate rugby union players in Northern Ireland Mie Honda Heat players Rugby union flankers Rugby union players from Potchefstroom Sharks (Currie Cup) players Sharks (rugby union) players South Africa international rugby union players South African expatriate sportspeople in Northern Ireland South African people of Dutch descent South African rugby union players Ulster Rugby players Kobelco Kobe Steelers players South African expatriate rugby union players in Japan 21st-century South African sportsmen {{SouthAfrica-rugbyunion-bio-1990s-stub