It was the “mental toughness” that carried the Springboks through the highs and lows of a massive British and Irish Lions tour, believes star winger Cheslin Kolbe.
Kolbe was referring to the 14-week bio-bubble that the team had to endure during the series and which has already been highlighted in the groundbreaking SuperSport documentary series Two Sides, which airs its third and final episode this coming Sunday.
Speaking outside the documentary, Kolbe underlines just what a tough task it was for the Boks, to be isolated for 14 weeks and some players not seeing their families for more than three months while stuck in the confined environment of a hotel.
If they weren’t mentally tough, given the challenges of facing one of the toughest sides in world rugby without 20 months of preparation and their last test in the World Cup, they would never had made it, he believes.
“What stands out for me is the mental side of the tour. Because of Covid we couldn’t go anywhere, we weren’t allowed to move freely. It could have gone either way - really bad or we could have handled it,” Kolbe says.
“In the end we found a way to handle it. The players and management did the best they could and we all had to buy into the situation and make the most of it. Some of us were lucky to have our families with us in the bubble,
“The management tried everything to make us feel at home, but to be in a situation like that for so long was tough. I had my family there, so the time will always be special.”
Kolbe adds that for some players it really got tough to mentally keep themselves focused.
“Where have you ever had a situation like that before? Where you can’t move around, where you are isolated in your room and someone brings food to your door and you can’t move?
“We had players in different parts of the hotel isolating and if you look what we went through, it just shows the character of the players to get through that. It shows what it means for us to pull that Springbok jersey over our heads.
“It shows what we would have done to wear that jersey,” he addds.
“Some of the guys didn’t see their families for three months. There were times when they were missing them so badly but they had no choice. They could go home or they could make the country proud of the jersey. We were all tested. But at the end of the day we made history with a special group of players.”
The final episode of Two Sides airs on Sunday on MNet at 6pm and SuperSport Grandstand at 7pm.