Forget Spotify Wrapped, or pondering the personal and professional triumphs and failures of the year that is currently drawing to its conclusion – all I really care about is how my rugby year played out. And 2024 was, without question, an exceptional one.
I mean, let’s look at the stats:
Springbok games attended: 6
Sharks games attended: 3
Springbok Women games attended: 1
Wins: 7
Losses: 2
Draws: 1 (that may as well have been a win, really)
Trophy lifts witnessed in person: 3
Full beers accidentally spilled over my head in the stands: 1 (I’m as surprised as you)
Game day traditions/superstitions adhered to: A potentially unhinged amount
Springbok jerseys worn: Every day is Bok Friday during Test season…
Played Impi on Spotify: 37 times (Wrapped does have some uses)
Pieces of cake consumed for breakfast on game days:…
Near nervous breakdowns: 14
Relax reminders issued by my watch: I choose not to pay attention to such passive-aggressive behaviour…
Manicures ruined by biting straight through the Gelish: 1
Happy tears shed: Countless
But enough about me. What was 2024 like for the three teams in question?
Springboks
This team. This year. Truly something special. Only the most bitter detractor could suggest that the current Springbok team isn’t absolutely exceptional. And the crazy part is that even the team and coaches would concede that they could have done better.
Historically, the Boks have tended not to perform well the year after winning a World Cup. Of course, 2020 was an anomaly, since they didn’t get to play, so who knows what could have happened immediately after the 2019 victory. Certainly 2021 was a bit of a mixed bag, ending with the Boks in top spot, but with a 61.5% winning ratio. In 2024, though, the Springboks, and their supporters, got the victory lap they truly deserved.
It was a year that saw the Boks win 11 out of 13 games for an 84.6% winning ratio and the number one position in the World Rugby rankings secured – the same stats they had in 2023, interestingly enough. That’s the highest their winning ratio has been in the professional era since 1998 (when it was 92%). Those two losses, against Ireland at home and Argentina away, came down to a point each. One point. It sucks to be on the other side of that, doesn’t it. A successful drop goal and a missed penalty – and the successful drop goal broke my heart (and annoyed me) way more than the missed penalty did, even if that game against Ireland was meaningless in the grand scheme of things, whereas the loss to Argentina had the potential to impact the results of the Rugby Championship. Something about the behaviour of the fans and media of one country we lost to versus the other, but we won’t get into that here.
It was a year of trophy lifts, albeit some more significant than others. The Boks lifted the Qatar Airways Cup, the Nelson Mandela Challenge Plate, the Freedom Cup, the Rugby Championship trophy, and the Prince William Cup. Being in the stadium to see the Freedom Cup lifted for the first time since 2009, and the Rugby Championship secured for the first time since 2019 was incredible. Some of those bitter detractors have been quick to point out that the 2019 iteration of the Rugby Championship was truncated due to the World Cup. This means the Boks had actually never won the full version of this contest previously – when they won in 2009, it was still the Tri Nations, as Argentina hadn’t joined yet. But we can tick that off the list now too. They went back-to-back in Australia for the first time since 1971, winning in Perth for the first time since 2009 and in Brisbane for the first time since 2013. In fact, they’ve now won four in a row against both Australia and New Zealand for the first time in the professional era. They also prevented both those teams from scoring a try in each of the second Tests against them. And achieved the same feat against Scotland during the end of year tour – a tour that was a clean sweep for the first time since 2013.
It wasn’t a perfect year; some games felt way more stressful than they needed to be, as new systems were implemented, and new players were introduced to the set up. The game against Portugal – an absolute joy to be at, and a timely reminder of why we love rugby just a week after a rather mean-spirited match against Ireland – was perhaps the only truly stress-free game of the year, even with an early red card.
For the first time, though, it felt like we got the balance right between building towards the next World Cup, and still getting results. Fifty players took to the field for the Boks over the course of the year, and 12 of those were debutants. At the same time, we witnessed the amazing moment as Eben ‘Elizabedi’ Etzebeth became the most capped Springbok of all time, playing his 128th Test in the game against Argentina that secured the Rugby Championship for the Boks. Vincent Koch and Kwagga Smith also celebrated milestones, playing their 50th Tests for the Boks this year, while Willie le Roux was carefully managed to ensure he has an opportunity to play his 100th at home next year. And while all this was going on, the Boks scored 450 points and 57 tries, while holding their opponents to 220 points and 23 tries. It’s no wonder that we’ve seen various players feature in countless team of the year lists, and that seven Boks made the World Rugby Men’s 15s Dream Team of the Year. Or that three of the four nominees for World Rugby’s Men’s 15s Player of the Year were Boks, with the inimitable Pieter-Steph du Toit taking it home for a second time, while Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu narrowly missed out on Breakthrough Player of the Year (won by the very deserving young All Blacks player, Wallace Sititi). We don’t need to dwell on the Coach of the Year silliness, everyone knows the truth on that front.
More valuable than all of these accolades and triumphs combined, though, is the fact that the Springboks continued to unite people across South Africa, and encouraged people to fall in love with rugby, whether for the first time, or again and again and again. What a year.
Springbok Women
While perhaps not quite on the same scale as for the Boks, 2024 was an outstanding year for the Springbok Women too. They won seven out of their ten games, playing some very exciting rugby, and ended the year in 12th position in the World Rugby rankings – up from 13th at the end of 2023.
It was a year that saw them win the Rugby Africa Women’s Cup for the third time in a row, thereby also securing their place in the World Cup next year. They beat the Barbarian Women for the first time ever, and comprehensively at that, with a 59-17 thumping at Cape Town Stadium, and extended their current winning streak against Spain to five consecutive victories. We also saw Libbie Janse van Rensburg become the first South African woman to exceed 200 Test points, a milestone she achieved during the victory over Spain. And while they may have lost to Italy and Australia during the WXV 2 competition, they came nail-bitingly close to beating those higher ranked teams for the first time (Italy is ranked 8th, and the score there was 19-23, while Australia is ranked 5th, and that score was 26-33).
More importantly, it was announced in August of this year that up to 150 women would finally be getting professional contracts from SA Rugby in 2025, and that a new elite competition is being launched at the same time. This promises to be an absolute game changer for women’s rugby in South Africa, where the vast majority of players have to date been participating as amateurs.
The introduction of Swys de Bruin as head coach for the women’s team has also been nothing short of inspired, and we can already see his impact in the way they’re playing. Next year promises to be even more exciting for this team, and they’ll be hoping for a far more competitive World Cup performance.
It’s also been really wonderful to see more and more people starting to attend their games, and show their support on social media, and so on. They’re not just a fun team to watch, they’re also a really talented team, and with all of the changes that have been initiated this year, and that should start coming to fruition next year, I think their upward trajectory will be increasingly steep.
Sharks
It’s a little trickier to recap for the Sharks, since playing in Europe essentially means the calendar year covers half of the 2023/2024 season, and half of the 2024/2025 season. It’s also a little trickier because, let’s face it, large parts of the 2023/2024 season are better forgotten.
And yet… Despite a fairly terrible 2023/2024 URC, the Sharks became the first South African team to win in Europe when they lifted the Challenge Cup in May of this year. Yes, yes, I know. It’s not on the same level as the Champions Cup blah blah blah. Sheesh, that victory really brought out some thieves of joy from fans of other SA sides, and from more than a few journalists and pundits. Apparently the Sharks should have pulled an England ala RWC 2019 and refused to celebrate because it wasn’t the trophy that they won. To that I saw bah humbug. You can only win the competition that you’re in, and what kind of sour grapes arrogance does it take not to celebrate when you do? And winning that competition got them right back into the Champions Cup for the 2024/2025 season, so it was a lot more significant than the negative nellies like to pretend. We also saw exciting young players, like Siya Masuku, showing their potential to deliver when it matters most during this competition, which is always a promising sign for the future.
The Sharks remained the only South African side to win any trophies this year when they lifted the Currie Cup in September. Not even the bizarrely freezing conditions could dampen the joy of that moment – their first Currie Cup secured since 2018, and my first Currie Cup final ever. It was the culmination of a Currie Cup tournament that saw the Sharks put a lot of emphasis on the competition’s role as a talent pipeline, with JP Pietersen coaching a senior side for the first time, and many young players getting their first opportunity to play at this level, while still maintaining the presence of a handful of more experienced team members. This approach certainly paid off in the end, and so did their BMT and persistent belief in themselves. I don’t think we ever expect to see a team go down to 12 players during a (100 minute) knockout game, and still make it through to the final. As for Jordan Hendrikse’s kick to win that final after the hooter had sounded – ice in his veins (and not just because of the aforementioned freezing conditions). These are the moments we live for as fans – from heartbreak to joy in the time it takes to slot a 59m penalty kick. Apologies to the Lions fans who experienced it in reverse and had to halt their celebrations.
The 2024/2025 URC got off to a mixed start, but one thing we can say for sure is that the Sharks are in a much better position than they were at the same time last year. By this point in the 2023/2024 season, they had lost six games and won one (against the Dragons at home). It was dire. And so, while they may have lost two games early on this season (against Connacht and Benneton, both away), the fact that they have secured four victories, one of those an away win at Rodney Parade, does make me feel a lot better about how this season is progressing.
They’ve only played two games in the Champions Cup thus far, with one win at home, and one loss away (funnily enough, the exact same start they had to their ultimately successful Challenge Cup campaign last season), so it’s still early days there. They have faced a lot of criticism for that loss against Leicester Tigers (damn Pollard for being so good!), and the fact that they fielded a ‘weakened’ team. That criticism overlooks the fact that at the time of playing that game, they had 15 players on the injury and recovery list, with six of those being Springboks. It also overlooks the fact that the only way to build depth is to give young players a chance to, well, play. Maybe playing them against a team like Leicester at Welford Road wouldn’t be any coach’s first choice, but sometimes our choices are made for us. There’s a bigger conversation to be had about player welfare in what’s basically a year-round season now, but this is already way too long.
The year isn’t over yet for the Sharks – they still have two URC games to play, against the Bulls at home and the Stormers away, and they’ll be hoping for good results to continue building what appears to be a better season than the last one.
The Sharks have also really upped the ante from a marketing perspective in the last couple of months, going all out to get both committed and casual fans into the stadium - a crucial component of growing the game we love. Of course, better results, and the ability to get star players like Siya Kolisi back with the team after his stint in France, don't hurt attendance either.
I’m looking forward to seeing what 2025 has in store for us as rugby fans. I may not do New Year’s resolutions, but I have already booked to be at the Sharks v Toulouse game in January, so at least I’m consistent…
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