Photo by Kevin Light
Kicking footballs for a living. It sounds like a pretty sweet gig. Especially when you played professional rugby overseas, now you can take on a new job that’s less demanding to the body.
That’s not entirely how Carl Meyer treats this opportunity in the CFL.
At the age of 33, the Global punter from Pietermaritzburg, South Africa has a chance to compete for the starting punter role this upcoming season. With years of rugby experience, Meyer made challenging passes look elegant, smashing bodies on the pitch and most importantly, splitting the uprights while remaining calm and collected.
“I’m extremely grateful that I’m still able to perform at the highest level in a different sport. It’s a crazy thing to think about making this transition this late in my athletic career, it’s unheard of. I love the challenge to see how much I can take this gift that’s been given to me. That’s a real driving force for me is how long I can keep my body healthy in such a physical sport, transitioning to a punter gives me much more longevity in my football career,” Meyer said.
The former professional rugby player was a seasoned vet of adapting to different environments across the world. From his home country to the Northern Hemisphere of Wales, United Kingdom, and eventually found his way to the New Orleans Gold of Major League Rugby.
Meyer, born in the top-tier rugby nation, was given a rugby ball as a boy. He described it as if an American kid was given a football at a young age, that’s how rugby started for Meyer. From running in the backyard to playing schoolboys rugby, he fell in love with the game and envisioned playing the sport at a professional level.
South Africa leads world rugby with four World Cup victories. The Rainbow Nation has been the breeding ground for some of the best rugby players on earth. Meyer joined the Durban Sharks Academy for two years before making the move to Wales, where Meyer started his professional rugby career.
His journey in Wales started with a year of club rugby before being picked up by the Newport Dragons Rugby Football Club, one of four professional teams in Wales. Meyer was primarily a flyhalf, centre and fullback, making quick decisions with the ball and making tackles in open space.
He earned 64 caps for the Dragons and played a crucial role in the place-kicking duty. Meyer has been kicking all his life, talking about making try-conversions and kicking under pressure, he said it’s almost second nature where you don’t think about it — blocking out the external noises.
Meyer moved across the pond to sign with the New Orleans Gold in 2019, which sparked his interest in American football.
“Rugby season in America starts once football season ends. Our GM brought it up to me that I could try to do both. I thought that was interesting. That offseason, I bought myself a football and started kicking,” Meyer recalled.
“There was a little bit of learning and tweaking to go from a bigger ball to a smaller one. Then COVID happened, I kept training, kept kicking the football because it translates really well for rugby. I signed a three-year deal in the States, so every offseason I would continue to kick the football. One day, I was training, and people saw me kicking the football on the field, and they came up to me and started asking questions.”
When Meyer’s rugby contract ended with New Orleans, it allowed him to give football a shot. From one professional sport to another, it doesn’t happen often.
“I worked with Mike Hollis, who mainly kicked for the Jacksonville Jaguars during his NFL career, we did a lot of technical work and managed to find me an opportunity in the Indoor Football League,” he added.
Meyer played for the Jacksonville Sharks in 2023 and helped the Sharks to win the championship that season.
In addition, he started working with former NFL kicker Nick Novak. That’s when he discovered the CFL and other possibilities to play football in North America.
“I actually didn’t know anything about the CFL, I was looking to see if I could get an opportunity in the UFL or something. Then Nick told me he’s having a kicking showcase next month and wanted me to participate. I was all in,” Meyer recalled.
Meyer spent one month training for the kicking showcase in San Diego, where CFL teams attended back in January 2024. Meyer initially prioritized becoming a placekicker and worked on his field goal-kicking before the start of the showcase. Meyer recalled the night before the event when CFL teams sat down with players and conducted interviews.
Teams were intrigued by his rugby background, and his ability to match the physical traits of football.
“Can you punt?” That question that was raised during the interview process.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, absolutely.’ That’s what I did in rugby, I do all of it. But knowing I haven’t punted in nine months and only been training my field goal kicking. I wasn’t going to punt until everyone started asking me,” Meyer recalled.
Photo Credit New Orleans Gold/MLR
His performance at the kicking showcase earned him a roster spot with the BC Lions. Meyer was selected sixth overall by the club in the 2024 CFL Global Draft.
Although he’s had some experience playing with the Jacksonville Sharks, spending the 2024 season with the Lions was his first football locker-room experience.
From kicking a rugby ball to playing football was a seamless transition for Meyer. The challenging part was kicking with equipment on.
“It was very interesting because kicking without equipment is so much easier than with equipment on. When you add the helmet, you now have this narrow window to look for, you have these bars in your eyesight, then you add the shoulder pads, and it becomes interesting. I had to learn not letting the equipment affect my swing,” Meyer said.
“The biggest adjustments though were to become specialized in one position. It’s just kicking now. I’m not dealing with the decision-making, making the pass, the tackle and all the different facets that I’m used to.”
Meyer spent the 2024 season soaking in what’s in front of him and was promoted to the active roster for the Week 13 Touchdown Pacific game in Victoria against the Ottawa REDBLACKS.
In 2025, he’s presented with a chance to kickstart another journey as a professional athlete for the second time in his career. Having worked with defensive coordinator Mike Benevides last year on special teams and watched Sean Whyte handle his business on the field, Meyer is motivated to prove that age is just a number.
“Coach Benny allowed me to be myself. He loved the fact that I was another defender on the field. I went down the field to make a tackle during the preseason game in Calgary, it’s just instinctual for me. Because I’ve learned to tackle without pads, I know how not to put myself in an awkward position,” Meyer said.
“Now that I’m not taking as many hits to the body, I can really focus on hammering down to be effective in my kicking game, to stay strong and healthy for as long as I possibly can. Just look at Sean Whyte as an example, he’s been doing it for so long. If I look after my body now, I feel like I’m in a new beginning of my career where I can have some good years left. I’m excited for this chapter.”
Residing in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in the offseason, Meyer has fully converted to living in North America with his family. He hopes to help more rugby players experience football in the future and vice versa, introducing rugby to more football players.
