All hail the persistant King Percival

When Percy Montgomery becomes the first Springbok to reach a century of caps when he runs out against the All Blacks at Newlands on Saturday it will be the culmination of a remarkable career of highs and lows.

There was a time in his career that he was ridiculed; he had to leave for Newport in Wales to keep going a calling that seemed to have stalled but, at the behest of Jake White, he returned to set one record after another and become a key figure in South Africa’s victory in the 2007 Rugby World Cup in France and one of the greatest Boks of all time.

Here are some key points from the life and times of South African rugby’s first Springbok centurion.

• Montgomery made his debut, playing at outside centre, in the second test against the British & Irish Lions at King’s Park in Durban on June 28, 1997 and scored a try.

• He played his first six tests in the No13 Springbok jersey and holds the unique record of also being selected to start in the No15 and No10 jerseys and also wearing the No16, No19, No20, No21 & No22 jerseys when coming on as a substitute.

• Across the entire spectrum of career records (caps, points, season, individual nations etc) he holds more than a 100 Springbok marks.

• He is the only current Springbok who can boast two victories over the All Blacks in New Zealand -- having played in the 13-3 victory in Wellington in 1998 and in the 30-28 win in Dunedin in 2008.

• Montgomery's fantastic performances in the 2007 Rugby World Cup rocketed him up the world scorers’ list to give him a total of 887 points after 99 tests (from 25 tries, 150 conversions, 148 penalties and six dropped goals) - well beyond the 312 points Naas Botha scored in 28 tests between 1980 and 1992. Joel Stransky is third on the list with 240 points.

• The first points ever credited to what was to become one of the most accurate kicking boots in the game, his left, were the two he got for a conversion against England at Twickenham in November 1997; in his ninth international. Later in his career he also went through a spell of 11 successive tests with no points from the boot -- apart from a pair of drop-goals in the third place play-off against the All Blacks at the Millennium Stadium in 1999 -- as Jannie de Beer, Henry Honiball and Braam van Straaten took over the kicking duties.

• In his 99 tests he has a 66.67% win ratio. In the Jake White years, from June 2004 to October 2007, he scored 612 points in 43 tests (Average of 14.2 per game).

• During the 2007 Rugby World Cup he attempted 44 place-kicks and goaled 39 of them. At the Stade de France, in the the pool game against England, the semifinal against Argentina, and the Final against England he aimed 18 kicks at the posts and goaled them all.

• One of his greatest pieces of control was in the Final when he was sent slamming headlong into a television camera behind the Springbok deadline by a shove in the back but he did not react, coming straight back onto the field to catch a difficult up-and-under and signaling to his teammates to keep their focus. The player who committed the foul, Toby Flood, was not carded.

• After the Final it emerged that he had played out the match, including kicking a crucial penalty, with seriously damaged knee ligaments.

[Supersport]