In the buildup to Siya Kolisi’s first game as Springbok captain, his coach Rassie Erasmus said something that might seem like a massive understatement six years later.
“If you win this game against England, your life could change,” said Erasmus, who himself was in an embryonic stage of his international coaching career after being in charge of the Boks for one exhibition game against Wales in Washington the week before.
The win that came on that June afternoon on the highveld was to set the tone for both Kolisi’s career as captain of his country, and his boss’s time with the Boks. For it was a day, like so many others like it in the following years, where the Boks found a way to prevail against the odds.
It had been a disastrous start for both captain and coach as the hosts found themselves trailing by 20 points a quarter of an hour into the match. The South Africans were employing a new defensive structure under the tutelage of Jacques Nienaber, and England exploited the Boks’ unfamiliarity with their new system by running in three tries.
The Boks had hardly been together long enough back then to be moulded into the resilient force that has earned the respect of the rugby world two Rugby World Cup titles later, and yet they showed a glimpse of what was to come. They refused to give up, they refused to be bowed, and they fought back to score a memorable win. The never say die attitude that has become intrinsic to Bok success was born.
The series was clinched a week later in the second test in Bloemfontein and Kolisi’s career as Bok leader was off to a winning start. To be fair, his life was probably changed from the moment Erasmus announced him as captain. He was a hugely popular choice of leader, both for the wider public eager to see the team become a representation of the South African society as a whole, and Kolisi’s teammates.
But winning those first two games against Eddie Jones’s England made his status as team leader more definite and real. And apart from those periods when injury has threatened his participation, such as in the buildup to both World Cups, there’s never been any debate that Kolisi is the identified leader. It comes down to much more than just what he does on the field.
STATESMANLIKE LEADER GOES INTO SEVENTH SEASON
The statesmanlike Kolisi goes into his seventh season as captain when he leads the Boks out at Loftus on Saturday for the clash between the world’s No 1 and No 2 ranked teams and apart from being the most decorated Bok captain with two World Cup titles to his name plus a British and Irish Lions series win, he’s also going into a record equalling season when it comes to the longevity of modern Bok skippers.
John Smit, who led the Boks to World Cup glory in 2007 and to a Lions series triumph and Tri-Nations title in a dominant 2009 season, was captain from 2004 to 2011 - in other words seven years. No other captain has since the end of isolation has come close to that number of seasons at the helm.
Kolisi is likely to become the longest serving post-isolation captain as he doesn’t believe his appetite for playing for the Boks is sated, although he is too humble to suggest the captaincy is that important. It is typical of the 32-year-old that he says just pulling on the Bok jersey and serving his country is what it’s all about for him.
At the time he did the interview with supersport.com it was April and he wasn’t sure Erasmus would continue with him as captain because he was playing for Racing 92 in Paris and the coach prefers his leader to be based inside the country.
“All I can say honestly is that as long as I still have an opportunity to still pull on the green and gold jersey that is all that matters,” said Kolisi.
“There are very few people that can wake up or dream that they want to be Bok captain. It has been an absolute honour and I have loved every single moment of it, tough though it has been, but all I want to do is wear the jersey. It doesn’t matter if I am captain or not. There are some amazing leaders in the group, so I am happy to just be part of the group.”
Make no mistake though, if Kolisi has his way he will add another four years of service to his current tally, and add an unprecedented third Rugby World Cup winners medal to his collection.
“Yes, I can make another World Cup, and so can some of the other players who have been part of the last two World Cups,” he says.
“I still feel good, and it helps that I play 80 minutes regularly at Racing. If I am not injured I feel like I can go another four years. Eben (Etzebeth) is in good shape and Bongi (Mbonambi) is in good shape too. It is all about what we can do on the field, but playing in the next World Cup is the plan.
“Right now the focus is on the tests against Ireland. We haven't beaten them in a long time and we need to win. But winning a third World Cup is the ultimate dream. It all just depends on how the body takes it. And how the mind takes it.
"That is the dream but there are guys coming through in South Africa who are really good. There might be a time when we need to pass on the baton but we (the senior players) are not going to give up without a fight.”
SELFLESSNESS
Not that Kolisi would ever dream of standing in the way of someone who may be better for the team and give South Africa a better chance of making it a hat-trick of successive World Cup titles. Kolisi’s selflessness and the sense of duty he brings to playing for South Africa has become part of his identity.
So is the duty he feels to the wider South African public when he pulls on his green and gold No 6 jersey. It was an attitude he took on after that conversation he had with the coach before the England game in Johannesburg six years ago, when Erasmus filled him in on why his life would undergo dramatic change.
“Rassie pointed out to me you can change the future of other kids who will realise they don’t have to suffer like you have suffered. He said he didn’t want my success from what we get as a team to be about me alone.
"I believe in our country and that if every single person who has a platform than can be used to help the country and help others, they should use it.
“That is what I want to do. All the achievement in rugby needs to be channeled towards helping other people. Maybe they are people I don’t know. That is how we make South Africa better.”
Kolisi reckons the Bok coach summed up the mission of the team perfectly in the closing episode of Chasing the Sun 2, the docuseries on South Africa’s second successive World Cup triumph and the follow up on the first series, which focused on the first win in Japan.
“The message at the end where Rassie explained what the whole idea of doing Chasing the Sun was about was very strong,” says Kolisi.
“Where he said that our mission, what we want to explain as a team, shouldn’t only end on the field, it should be with us every single day. What we go through as a group and a country, the different challenges we face and overcome, there are a lot of positive we can focus on and cling to.
“It is basically about focusing on finding solutions rather than focusing on the problems. For us we are in an incredibly privileged position of being able to do what we love and in so doing be able to control the whole country’s mood through our exploits.
"That we are all from different walks of life and yet were able to come together successfully to achieve a common goal that is bigger than all of us was the big thing in Rassie’s message.
“We are black guys, we are white guys, we are English guys and Afrikaans guys, there are Xhosa guys in the group and Zulus in the group, there are also Sothos. We had to find a way to work together towards a common goal which was to make South Africa proud but at the same time, in doing that, understand that we all have our own ways of living, our own different culture.
Some things work for some of the guys, but not for others. A person needs to get an understanding in that situation that what works for him might not work for others.”
STUNG BY RASSIE’S CRITICISM
For Kolisi, it all comes down to be straight, direct and honest. While he admits that he was stung by it and it precipitated much introspection and self-criticism on his part, he believes the way Rassie Erasmus harangued him and some of the other senior players at a team meeting after the Pool game loss to Ireland, was the correct way to go about it.
“You would have seen in Chasing the Sun that there were some hard conversations between myself, Duane (Vermeulen) and Eben, because at the end of the day you have to be moving towards the same goal and put differences aside and find a way to work together.
“I am just glad that through Chasing the Sun people can see that becoming a Springbok is not easy and not for everyone, you have to go through a lot. You get challenged, taken to places you’ve never been to before. You have hard conversations. Like after the Ireland game in the World Cup.
“When Rassie said ‘Siya is not the only thing to come out of South Africa’ it made me ask questions about myself. I started thinking is he saying that because I think I am too big. Am I acting differently? It gave me a moment to pause and think about whether I was being the best teammate I could be. Am I humble, am I putting myself up above everybody else.
“Those things (interactions) are tough and a lot of people wouldn’t be able to take that. But he (Rassie) knows exactly when you do need those hard words, a reminder to check yourself. Also a whole nation is depending on you and their hopes are on your shoulders. So we have to keep ourselves in check. “
REACTING IN A POSITIVE WAY
Kolisi said there was a time when he was worried about his place in the team, would he be playing in the quarterfinal. It was what Erasmus probably wanted, he didn’t want the players to be in comfort zones, and it had the desired effect.
“When Rassie spoke about his team for the quarterfinals my name wasn’t in the team, Eben’s name wasn’t in the team, Duane wasn’t in the team. So all I did then was say ‘Okay, I am going to show you, I am going to show that I am better than you think I am’. Whereas some people would just give up and become negative.
“What I liked about that was that the guys just got together and started to build each other up, started to work towards making ourselves a better team, to show we are not arrogant and we know South Africa is more important than us. The Bok team is more important than my goals and my personal dreams.”
Listening to Kolisi speak, the realisation dawns that by creating an environment that breeds such strong self-belief and a never give up mentality in the players, the coaches might be creating a breed of players they will find hard to ever drop from their plans even when they finally do get a bit long in the tooth.
"They will fight with the same intensity and passion to retain their places that they do for the South African cause, and the mental strength that has been built up might extend more than a few careers.
“When it comes to our mental strength, it’s all about the hard work we do before we get into tight situations,” said Kolisi.
“We work flipping hard. That is what we are majored on, the hard work and the physicality, both things being a given for us. And never giving up. I remember we were at a camp for three weeks in Cape Town where Felix (Jones) and the other coaches started talking about chasing lost causes.
"No matter whether it looks like it is going to be a try to the opposition don’t stop chasing. That was our mentality at the World Cup in France.
“It has been like that for many of us in our lives too. Jacques said we mustn’t let others script our movies for us, that most of us shouldn’t be where we are today given what it took for us to get there. I could have given up when I was young, and a lot of the other guys as well. I could easily have just said ‘You know what, this is how it is going to be, I will stop now’.
“But no, we chose to stick with it, we chose to go to training when the fields were a bit thorny and you played bare foot because you didn’t have shoes. That is why when Rassie spoke in 2019, he said we picked you because maybe there are better guys than you when it comes to playing rugby, but what you bring through is that you are the right people for this group.
"The stuff you bring through makes you get to where you are, and it helps you when you get to the gutter to get up and keep on fighting.”
SEMI-FINAL ESCAPE WAS DOWN TO RESERVES
Like the Boks did in both the World Cup quarterfinal against France and a week later against England in the semifinal. When they trailed by nine points with time running out, many thought the Boks’ chances of retaining the Webb Ellis trophy, but not the players themselves.
“Sometimes you have doubts but it is not over until it is over. That is one of our sayings, it is not over until it is over. That is the kind of team that we are. It doesn’t matter who we playing, when it gets tough or it looks like we are not going to win we just focus on the job we need to do because worrying about the scoreboard will not get you to where you want to go.
“You just keep pounding the rock until something goes right. That semifinal was one game that really brought through the concept of rugby being a 23-man sport. The reserves came on and made it clear they would win it for us. And they did.
"That’s the beauty of our team and our attitude, when you get subbed you know that is happening because the player replacing you on the field can take it to another level.”
LIONS SERIES WAS “CRAZY”
Some of the pressure that the Boks faced in the most recent World Cup though was small fry in comparison to what they faced down when they played the British and Irish Lions in the iconic three test series in 2021. The Boks hadn’t played together from the 2019 RWC final until the warmup game against Georgia a few weeks before the series started because of Covid, and apart from forcing the Boks to play in front of empty stadiums, it played havoc with their preparations in other ways too.
“That was a different challenge,” recalled Kolis
“The amount of positive Covid tests we had made it crazy. Before the first game I was with the team for the first time on the Monday before the first test. It wasn’t just me, but Handre (Pollard) and a couple of the guys too. We couldn’t train, we were sitting in a hotel room. You could only cycle by yourself. It was crazy.
“We were doing gym sessions in our bedrooms off computers by doing exercises with your chairs and bed. But the one thing we said as a group was that we would not make an excuse afterwards.
"We said if we lose we won’t make excuses because if you put on the jersey and you accept it when they present it to you and you go and play, people expect to see the Springboks. Not Springboks who have had Covid or Springboks that have been lying in bed.
“We are too proud a nation and there have been far more difficult things people have faced down in this country. We were still getting our meals, we still had our gym downstairs where we could cycle. We didn’t want to make excuses.We wanted to win and we believed we could win.
"That belief comes from the time the coaches and management show their belief in you by putting their trust in you. That takes away all your doubts and excuses and focuses you just on what you need to do.”