Rodney "Rod" B. Kafer was a rugby union

Rugby union

Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...

 player for the ACT Brumbies and the Australian Wallabies. He is remembered by Brumbies fans for kicking a drop-goal in the final minute in a 2001 game against the Cats giving the Brumbies a one point win. He now works for Fox Sports

Fox Sports (Australia)

Fox Sports is an Australia group of sports channels. They are owned by the Premier Media Group, which is in turn owned by News Corporation, and Consolidated Media Holdings. Its main competitors are ESPN, which has little local content and the free-to-air digital channel One HD...

 as a rugby commentator and has a weekly segment on the show "The Rugby Club" called Kafe's Chalkboard. He attended Canberra Grammar School

Canberra Grammar School

Canberra Grammar School is an independent, day and boarding school for boys, located in Red Hill, a suburb of Canberra, the capital of Australia....

 in his youth.

At the age of 15 he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes

Kafer was the first player to have received winners medals from the major Southern and Northern Hemisphere rugby tournaments, the Super 12 with the ACT Brumbies in 2001 and the Heineken Cup

Heineken Cup

The Heineken Cup is one of two annual rugby union competitions organised by European Rugby Cup involving leading club, regional and provincial teams from the six International Rugby Board countries in Europe whose national teams compete in the Six Nations Championship: England, France, Ireland,...

 with the Leicester Tigers

Leicester Tigers

Leicester Tigers is an English rugby union club that plays in the Aviva Premiership.Leicester are the most successful English club since the introduction of league rugby in 1987, a record 9 times English champions - 3 more than either Bath or Wasps, the last of which was in 2010...

 in 2002. The only other player to have achieved this is Doug Howlett

Doug Howlett

Douglas Charles Howlett is a professional New Zealand rugby union player of Tongan descent. He is primarily a wing but he has also covered fullback at national and international levels. He currently plays in Ireland with Munster. He is the brother of former Tongan rugby league international Phil...

, enjoying success with the Auckland Blues in 2003 and Munster

Munster Rugby

Munster Rugby is an Irish professional rugby union team based in Munster, that competes in the RaboDirect Pro12 and Heineken Cup.The team represents the Irish Rugby Football Union Munster Branch which is one of four primary branches of the IRFU, and is responsible for rugby union in the Irish...

 in 2008.

Kafer is generally considered to be one of the foremost thinkers of the game and is believed to have been the brains behind the Brumbies successes in the early years

Kafer moved to the northern hemisphere in 2001 and spent two years playing for the Leicester Tigers before signing as player coach for Saracens F.C.

Saracens F.C.

Saracens are a professional rugby union team based in St. Albans, England – although they play their home games at Vicarage Road, in Watford. They are currently members of the Aviva Premiership, the top level of domestic rugby union in England...

. However, when Wayne Shelford

Wayne Shelford

Wayne Thomas "Buck" Shelford is a New Zealand former rugby union footballer and coach who represented and captained New Zealand in the late 1980s...

was sacked as head coach, Kafer was appointed in his place and gave up playing.

He quit Saracens in December 2004 after a bad start to the season.

In addition to his commentating commitments with Fox Sports Rugby, Kafer also presides as a director of the boutique telecommunications company, Totalcom