Levan Maisashvili: 'Everyone was joking, you still like South Africa!'

Levan Maisashvili was in his element as soon as the interview refreshments arrived at the table in the lobby of a Cape Town hotel. It wasn’t his coffee ‘special’ or the bottled water that energised him. It was the opportunity to highlight his sense of localness. “Ngiyabonga” he said to the waitress, catching her by surprise that he knew the isiXhosa way of saying thank you.

It’s the legacy of his remarkable over-extended stay in South Africa three years ago. On tour with Georgia for a two-Test series versus the Springboks at the height of the pandemic, he took ill after the first match in Pretoria and so grave was the prognosis that he was given only a two per chance of survival.

In the end, following a month-long coma and weeks of rehabilitation at a Johannesburg hospital after he woke, he beat the odds and was delighted to now have finally made his first trip back to South Africa since his near-death ordeal.

He tried to return previously. Georgian franchise side Black Lion were taking part in the 2022 Currie Cup First Division and were basing themselves in Stellenbosch, but Maisashvili was prevented from boarding the flight from Istanbul as he was still listed as having overstayed his visa the previous year even though he had the accompanying paperwork explaining that hospitalisation was the reason he didn’t depart before deadline.

“It’s a very big joke now,” he chuckled, seated with RugbyPass by the hotel windows looking out onto a busy Strand Street. “We had a flight from Tbilisi to Istanbul, Istanbul-Cape Town and I was stopped at Istanbul. The whole team was boarded already and a lady told me, ‘We have some issues, we cannot give you permission because the last time you overstayed’.

“I had papers that explained why I stayed because I was in hospital, because I was one month in a coma. It was obvious why I stayed, but that time they didn’t permit me to enter. My assistant coaches led the team; I only led from Georgia, on WhatsApp and online.”

That red tape sorted, Georgia’s participation in the World Rugby U20 Championship was the reason Maisashvili was back in South Africa in recent weeks, taking in their pool matches in Athlone and Stellenbosch before flying to Tokyo and on to Sydney to monitor Richard Cockerill’s Lelos Test team on their tour versus Japan and Australia.

We’ll have plenty later about this new high-performance role he has taken on at the Georgian union after stepping away as first-team coach following the completion of Rugby World Cup 2023. But first, his emotional return to South Africa and the country that will always have a special place in his heart. “This is my first time here in three years. July 6 three years ago was the first time I went to Morningside Hospital with covid and I left in September.

“Yes, I love South Africa. I have a big, big experience from South Africa. The first time I came in 2004 was as coach of the Georgia U19s to Durban. I decided to come back and spent four months as an intern in KwaZulu Union, so all my life I was supporting South Africa. Everyone was joking, you still like South Africa after what happened?!

“It’s a great country, great experience for me. I only can say, ‘Thank you, God’ because God saved me. My wife was ready to fly here but it wasn’t reasonable because every day they were waiting for me to die. It wasn’t reasonable but when I woke from the coma, the recovery went very quickly.

“Thank you people who were praying for me. For example, I met a doctor, the U20s tournament doctor who was also the Black Lion tour doctor. When he met me last week he was so happy because he said I was so prayed for.

“After what happened, a lot of values were changed in my life. When I woke up after one month in a coma and identified what was happening, I identified that life is so short. There is no time to worry about the stupid small things and fighting about the stupid things because you have to enjoy life and have a good relationship with everyone.

“You can’t have no stress because life is full of stress but a lot of values were absolutely changed for me and I'm very thankful for everyone. I have a great friends here. For example my doctors, I have one Georgian doctor who has been working for 28 years in South Africa and he helped me a lot.

"My pulmonologist, Dr Bhamjee, great person. Every day he was coming to me and just explaining how I was doing. And Robyn Keyser, my physiotherapist, who helped me day by day, step by step. She is a great person, a very good friend of mine now. I will show the video.”

Maisashvili opened his phone and the footage was astounding. Unrecognisable and sporting a Tom-Hanks-in-Castaway-type beard, he was being lifted by Keyser. “That is out of the coma after the one week, the first time I managed to stand up. The first step,” he enthused.

“When I stepped the first time it was so hard but step by step by step, every day; Robyn every day she was coming, encouraging me. ‘We have to do this, have to do that’. All of the nurses, some Zulu, some Xhosa, I was learning every day how to say thank you. That is the biggest humanity, the biggest thing for people, how to help each other and to know the difference between the people.

“When you have an issue and someone is helping you, what is life? It’s the biggest thing someone fighting for your life, helping you, just fighting every day. I was 50, 55, maximum 60 kilos when I woke up, just skin and bone. All the people who helped me and also people who were praying outside, in Georgia, people who didn’t know me, that’s a great experience for me. Never give up, just fight, fight and fight.

“I’ve changed, I’ve absolutely changed because before my disease my outlook was totally different. Now I’m more calm. Now I’m doing things more with mindset than before. I’m feeling great. I can control my emotions, my decisions more than before because when you have troubles in life, you are more thankful for that. It’s human habits.

“Why I’m keeping that video (of the first step) and photos is because it’s a reminder of my health. Life is so short. You have to appreciate all the gifts that God is giving us and you have to remember you have to be happy. Don’t have a moan. I am not a person who moans. I’m a person who is always fighting but after my disease, I absolutely have a good feeling of what I have.

“Everyone was thinking after that I would stop working as a coach because no way, only two people had survived with lungs that had fully collapsed. I’m fully healthy now. I came home in September and in the middle of October I was standing at a field. It was very hard for me, holding my hands on a post. But now I’m fully recovered, in full health.”

The thing is, Maisashvili is no longer a head coach. Georgia finished bottom of Pool C at last year’s Rugby World Cup in France, drawing one game and losing their other three. There were headlines that he had been sacked when the reality was a very different story. He had always felt Georgian rugby was missing an overseer of operations, someone who could link all their rugby output. Think Conor O’Shea at the RFU or the IRFU’s recently departed David Nucifora.

Maisashvili willingly moved upstairs and was then at the core of the negotiations that installed Cockerill as Georgia and Black Lion head coach. “It was very hard, very difficult for me to decide to leave after 30 years working on a pitch, but the position that I am doing now is more important.

"Why? The person who leads the position has to know Georgian people very well, the structure inside of the Georgian scene, what is happening, how it’s happening, because it’s impossible for someone to come in new to all this process, to find a glue with all these teams.

“We have a lot of different things which are not usual for UK or New Zealand. That is why I decided. Every head coach needs a person who will be a bridge between union and team because the head coach has to worry absolutely on a pitch and not the other processes. This is not just the national team, it’s all the pathway because if we can’t have good youngsters, all the success of what you are doing will maybe one day stop.

“That is why this process is more important, why I decided to take that position. Also, the last World Cup was a little bit disappointing because the target, winning two games, maybe three and going beyond the pool stage, wasn’t achieved. It was partly not achieved because in all the games we played absolutely great rugby.

“All those games were played for winning, not the usual tier two countries playing against a tier one country. If you watch the first game against Australia or the last game against Welsh, we were absolutely competitive and played good rugby.

"Against Fiji we did everything and I still have a lot of questions why we didn’t win that game. That also was part of my responsibility. I decided to stop working as a head coach and to fight against the issues that we definitely have to fix. If we want sustainability, if we want consistent development, we need to fix the small issues.”

Maisashvili likes Cockerill. “We had a couple of different candidates, we had negotiations, I was fully involved in that process with everyone. When we decided to choose Richard, we had a chat about the possibilities, about the job descriptions that he has because it is not a typical head coach. We have a different system because our Black Lion team is not a typical franchise team which, for example, Edinburgh are where Richard was before as head coach.

“We have the coach of the national team at the same time coaching the Black Lion and the head coach’s season is working all year and it’s a very hard job. I know. I worked the last three years of that schedule but if we want to achieve success, we have to work like that. I'd a chat with Richard, he is a very good person with a strong personality. His work rate is amazing, I’m watching how he is working, giving him all that free space.

“He knows my phone is 24-hour ready to help him. He knows all his responsibilities, he knows if he needs something with the union I am the bridge between the team and the union. Also, when you know how hard it is for the head coach, what it looks like and what he is feeling, it’s much easier to help him on my side because I know how everything works.

“He is learning. He is a very careful person. He immediately identified what the difference of the Georgians is. It’s a little bit of a different culture, different personality, differences between Georgia and England. He has tried to learn it, he is observing and has tried to adapt all that because without that it is impossible. The head coach has to fully understand our culture because that is the only way it can be a success.”

Helped greatly by Bidzina Ivanishvili, who built a lot of stadiums and provided plenty of investment, the rugby infrastructure in Georgia is very different from when Maisashvili started coaching as a 19-year-old in 1994. “Only a few people were coaching and there were few clubs. The domestic league was only six teams. Same quantity of youngster teams. There was absolutely nothing. Only one pitch, no grass. No changing rooms. Just nothing.

“In winter, when we had our training indoors – indoor was without the glass – and there wasn’t electricity in the country, we just had three hours per 24 hours electricity. We trained with candles. It was an indoor facility with Swedish walls and we just hung the candles on that wall and trained. Georgia didn’t have lights at that time but that generation, which included Mamuka Gorgodze, had amazing resilience.

“Life wasn’t easy. I was playing and also coaching because there were not enough jobs to make money. My first salary in 1995 was approximately 60 lari, which was 30 dollars per month. That time no one had a salary as a player. We played rugby for enjoyment, for love of rugby, not to make money.

“I had 60 lari for coaching rugby to the kids and also three times per week I was working at a clothing shop as a night guard, starting at seven o’clock and finishing at 11 in the morning, all night three times per week. That gave me 100 lari, so the total was 160 lari, approximately 80 dollars per month. That was life.

“When my team (Lelo Saracens) became champions of Georgia, the senior team, it was 2004. That time, after 10 years in the game, I had 120 lari. People asked why were you doing that and there was only one answer. Because we loved it.

"No one could imagine that one day Georgia would be like that [professional]. Now we have a franchise team with what I would say is a good salary. I can’t compare it with the Top 14 but we have approximate Pro D2 contracts, we have everything. Just not the opportunity to play big games. We have everything but we just need games.”