Robbers tie up stabbed NZ coach

John Mitchell. Photo / Greg Bowker

Former All Blacks coach John Mitchell, bleeding from stab wounds, was tied to a chair with phone cords and curtains after robbers ransacked his South African apartment and attacked him.

His flatmate, fellow Kiwi rugby man Wayne Taylor, managed to climb down a drainpipe to run for help.

Mitchell's brother, Paul, has spoken of the ordeal that put the new coach of the Golden Lions in hospital requiring stitches.

The attackers fled with laptops, phones and cameras from the apartment in Hyde Park, Johannesburg.

Speaking from his Te Kuiti home, Paul Mitchell said his older brother, 46, "would not have gone down without a fight".

But after wrestling with one intruder, the rugby hard man thought he was dead when another came at him with a knife.

"He did think, 'This could be it'," Mitchell told the Herald yesterday afternoon.

John Mitchell was tied up for some time before Taylor, the Lions' conditioning coach, kicked down the door with security guards. He had gone to get help from the front gate of their residential complex, which is guarded around the clock.

Warrant Officer Moses Maphakela of the Johannesburg police told 3News the intruders had got in through a kitchen window, which had been left slightly open.

The attack occurred about 10pm Saturday (local time). Mitchell was at the apartment, owned by Springboks assistant coach Dick Muir, when he heard a commotion.

Believing it to be Taylor playing a joke, he jumped at one of the intruders, pinning him by his throat.

"He did wrestle the guy and had one guy pretty good," said Paul Mitchell. But the second intruder stabbed him several times. "He got one in the bicep, just more or less a cut that required stitches, but the cut in the actual leg was 3 or 4 inches deep and at the moment it's swelling up."

John Mitchell's manager, John Fordham, said it had been a "frightening and harrowing situation".

"He felt until he was examined that might have been a tendon but it wasn't, it missed," he said.

"But I spoke to him at length last evening Sydney time and he was remarkably composed."

Mitchell finished his season with the Western Force Super side in Perth and signed with the Lions, who compete in South Africa's Currie Cup.

Wife Kay Mitchell and children Daryl and Ciara stayed in Perth. A relieved Mrs Mitchell was yesterday still too shaken to say much.

"He's just a long way away," she said. "It's not what you want to hear, but we're blessed that he's okay."

Mrs Mitchell was looking forward to her husband's return in a few weeks.

Mr Fordham said Mitchell would be at the Lions' training last night (NZT), something his wife said was typical of her husband, who "just carries on".