Siya gives hope through his pain
No one lost this match. One team, one man, one nation edged it.
Siya Kolisi’s face is always swollen and out of shape around a Springbok Test.
It is distended during the national anthem, a performance worth the ticket price all by itself.
“The head rocks back, the chin jags out, and as his mouth opens you can see every tooth in it, the tongue and the tonsils and the remains of the energy gel he polished off during the warm-up,” wrote Jonathan Liew for the Guardian. “For South Africa’s captain, this can never simply be a perfunctory discharge of pre-match formalities. It’s an opportunity, a decisive moment, a chance to gain an edge. And when you play rugby for South Africa, you quickly learn that there is no edge too small to be worth the effort.”
Kolisi’s face was distorted, distended and out of shape at the end of the epic against the All Blacks at Ellis Park, swelling and discoloured after a high shot by Sam Cane. There was a suggestion he had a fractured cheekbone. He looked sore, in all sorts of pain, but still he did not budge, he did not leave the side of the field.
When Kwagga Smith squirreled over to bring the Boks to within three points of the All Blacks, Kolisi had been off the field for eight minutes. Willie le Roux looked to be begging his captain to go down the tunnel and get the treatment his face obviously needed. An official tried to walk him away from the bench, but he would not budge.
Then Grant Williams sold Sam Darry the biggest of dummies, creating a gap. The hole was enormous and the little man filled it, powering through the tackle of Cortez Ratima. Kolisi sprang into the arms of Jasper Wiese. Bongani Mbonambi hugged him, his shoulder hitting his captain’s face. The hooker would have been carded for that hit in the match.
Do you feel any pain in those moments? Does it all become secondary to the occasion and the achievement? How far will one player go to get the edge? As far as it takes. After the match, Kolisi spent six minutes signing autographs and taking selfies. He did not need to, but those six minutes, nurturing his and his team’s connection with South Africans, was a another part of the edge that makes the Springboks special and his leadership a wonder to cherish. That is why the Boks moved their team announcement from Tuesday to Thursday. Kolisi is worth the wait.
The 107th meeting between the Springboks and the All Blacks started with the worst of timing and ended with the best. Emirates Airline was apparently ahead of time, the stadium DJ got flustered and cocked up, drowning out the haka and taking away from the feel of the game.
“It was never the intention to schedule any activities that would coincide with such an iconic moment of any Test match against the All Blacks. That it occurred was a result of timekeeping challenges and simple human error,” said SA Rugby CEO Rian Oberholzer. “In the confusion, the crowd’s excited cheering was mistaken to have marked the conclusion of the haka by an unsighted sound engineer who restarted the music programme. It was highly regrettable but in no way deliberate.”
Regrets, the Boks had a few early on. It was all very rushed, full of fire and the disciplined madness that is rugby, and the All Blacks swooped. To summarise, Codie Taylor scored a try, Mbonambi gobbled a knock-on-ish try, Caleb Clarke dotted down a beauty, 10 Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu kept the Boks in reach, Jordie Barrett’s intercept try took them out of reach again and then Clarke looked to have all but won it for the visitors.
The momentum was already swinging back towards the Boks when Ofa Tu’ungafasi was binned with 13 minutes to go. Step up Feinberg-Mngomezulu with his finest kick of the night, a touch finder.
“Wow. What a kick! When you need it! When you need it! Stand up! Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu! Into the five! that is massive!” shouted former All Black Justin Marshall on SuperSport.
Step up Smith and Williams. Play the music, bring on the dancers, sing songs to angels.
“Give me hope, Joanna. Give me hope, Joanna,” played the DJ at the end, finally getting his timing right. Eddy Grant’s apartheid song was banned in South Africa in 1988 when it was issued.
Kolisi was born three years later after Grant released it. Kolisi’s early life was distorted and distended by ongoing hardships of apartheid. He has written about the “intense hunger he felt almost every day in the black township of Zwide, in Port Elizabeth”, describing it as “all consuming … the more I tried to ignore the pain, the worse it got”.
At 33, he has learnt to embrace and overcome pain. No one lost this match. One team, one man, one nation edged it.
Scorers:
South Africa – Tries: Bongi Mbonambi, Kwagga Smith, Grant Williams. Conversions: Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu (2). Penalties: Feinberg-Mngomezulu (4).
New Zealand: Tries: Codie Taylor, Caleb Clarke (2), Jordie Barrett. Conversions: Damian McKenzie (2). Penalty: McKenzie.
Yellow cards: Aphelele Fassi (5), Ofa Tu’ungafasi (67)
Teams
South Africa: 15 Aphelele Fassi, 14 Cheslin Kolbe, 13 Jesse Kriel, 12 Damian de Allende, 11 Kurt-Lee Arendse, 10 Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, 9 Cobus Reinach, 8 Jasper Wiese, 7 Ben-Jason Dixon, 6 Siya Kolisi (captain), 5 Ruan Nortje, 4 Pieter-Steph du Toit, 3 Frans Malherbe, 2 Bongi Mbonambi, 1 Ox Nche. Replacements: 16 Malcolm Marx, 17 Gerhard Steenekamp, 18 Vincent Koch, 19 Eben Etzebeth, 20 Elrigh Louw, 21 Kwagga Smith, 22 Grant Williams, 23 Handre Pollard.
New Zealand: 15 Beauden Barrett, 14 Will Jordan, 13 Rieko Ioane, 12 Jordie Barrett, 11 Caleb Clarke, 10 Damian McKenzie, 9 TJ Perenara, 8 Ardie Savea, 7 Sam Cane, 6 Ethan Blackadder, 5 Tupou Vaa’i, 4 Scott Barrett (captain), 3 Tyrel Lomax, 2 Codie Taylor, 1 Tamaiti Williams. Replacements: 16 Asafo Aumua, 17 Ofa Tu’ungafasi, 18 Fletcher Newell, 19 Sam Darry, 20 Samipeni Finau, 21 Cortez Ratima, 22 Anton Lienert-Brown, 23 Mark Tele’a.
Referee: Andrew Brace (Ireland).
Assistant referees: Matthew Carley (England) and Jordan Way (Australia).
TMO: Brian MacNeice (Ireland).