A year of sporting triumphs and close calls

If successful sporting teams were South Africa’s chief export, business would be booming. As we approach year-end, 2025 is a case in point. Where better to start than the Springboks, well on track to do what has never been done before: winning a third consecutive Rugby World Cup in 2027.

Things didn’t always go according to plan in 2025 — remember the galling defeat by the Wallabies at Ellis Park? — but any kinks in the green machine were straightened out quickly. The Boks won the Rugby Championship (against New Zealand, Australia and Argentina), including a six-try, 43-10 romp against the All Blacks in Wellington, and remained unbeaten on a tough European tour.

The game against Ireland in Dublin on the end-of-year tour is worth reconsidering. Ireland, we’re often told, are World Cup winners in the making. They squeeze every bit of juice out of their domestic structures and produce well-schooled, intelligent rugby players.

In Tadhg Beirne they have the epitome of a grizzled contemporary forward. He’s hard, troublesome and, having been schooled by Munster teammate Peter O’Mahony, streetwise.

Beirne and his fellow forwards were nowhere against the Boks. Rassie Erasmus’s men produced three first-half tries (four overall) to lead 19-7 at the break and, as he so often did on the European tour, Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu put it beyond reach with a scintillating second-half try as the Boks ran out deserved 24-13 winners.

Feinberg-Mngomezulu is a once-in-a-generation player. Erasmus’s balancing act over the next 24 months will be to expose him to every conceivable situation while nursing ageing stars like 2025 world player of the year Malcolm Marx through to the next World Cup.

He might also have a passing word with Eben Etzebeth for jamming his thumb in Welsh flanker Alex Mann’s eye. That act was punished with a 12-week ban.

South Africa’s age-group teams have often been inconsistent, an aspiring golden generation often followed by a dark age of underachievement. In 2025, however, the Baby Boks won the world under-20 championship in Italy in style, running in some astounding tries in the process.

Coach Kevin Foote’s team scored 11 tries to beat Australia 73-17 in Calvisano. They beat Scotland by 59 points and though they endured some anxious moments in the semi-final against Argentina they eventually won 48-24. In the final, the Baby Boks beat New Zealand’s Baby Blacks 23-15, a result that tells us much about what is coming up through the ranks.

If a rugby season is a book of linked short stories, cricket’s World Test Championship final at Lord’s in June was a modernist poem by Ezra Pound or TS Eliot. The analogy is used intentionally. Modernist poetry — and literature — are famously self-referring. In other words, the narrator makes the reader aware that they know they are reading “a poem” or “a book”.

Finals are like this. Their meaning is not to be found in previous results or past form. The meaning of finals is generated from within. They are, therefore, self-referring. All meaning is generated from within the match itself.

Only two players in the South African team had won an international cricket tournament before, so it was an entirely new experience for most of the Proteas. Kagiso Rabada and Aiden Markram were on the winning side when South Africa’s under-19s, coached by Ray Jennings, won the under-19 World Cup in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2014.

Rabada’s words to Jansen should be recorded for posterity. ‘Can I now have a tree planted for me at the [St Stithians] oval, please, sir?’

—  Kagiso Rabada

Markram, the player of the tournament, scored 66 not out in the final against Pakistan, but the real destroyer was Rabada. He took six for 25 against Australia in the semifinal, the definitive performance of the match. Soon after, forgetting the time difference between the UAE and Joburg, he phoned his school coach Wim Jansen, waking him up in the middle of the night.

Rabada’s words to Jansen should be recorded for posterity. “Can I now have a tree planted for me at the [St Stithians] oval, please, sir?”

Jansen sleepily explained that six wickets against Australia probably qualified for a tree, especially since Rabada had never taken a “five-fer” while at school and so, strictly speaking, didn’t qualify to have a tree planted while he was a schoolboy.

Given past experience it wasn’t surprising that the two standout performances in London were from Rabada and Markram. Rabada took nine for 110 in the match, while Markram scored 136 in South Africa’s second innings to take the world championship mace by five wickets.

A cheeky supporting role was played by captain Temba Bavuma. Batting with a hamstring strain, he kept Markram company with a sober 66 in the Proteas’ second innings. And his instinct to ask Australia to bat after winning the toss on the first morning proved inspired.

South Africa winning at Lord’s was all the more remarkable for the fact that in September 2024 they were loitering in sixth position on the world Test log. At that stage their presence in the final was no more than a theoretical possibility. They had two-Test series coming up against Bangladesh (away), Sri Lanka and Pakistan (home) but needed to win six on the reel to even have a chance.

This they achieved. So they flew to London in June, secure in the knowledge that finals are one-off events. The Springboks had shown them and the nation how to win, but we found out at Lord’s that the Boks didn’t have a monopoly on export success.

Leaving it late was not confined to cricket. It was only on October 14, with a 3-0 win over Rwanda at the Mbombela Stadium in Polokwane, that Bafana Bafana knew for sure they had qualified for the Fifa World Cup in 2026. At the same time, Nigeria thumped Benin 4-0, which meant that Benin dropped to third position on the standings after they’d started the final round of fixtures in first place. Not that South Africa was complaining. They finished first in the standings, ensuring automatic qualification, while Nigeria went into a dizzy system of secondary qualifiers as Group C’s second-placed team. Nigeria ultimately lost out to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on penalties.

In early December, the draw for the World Cup was made. Bafana found themselves Mexico-based, playing Mexico in the tournament’s opening fixture, with South Korea and a yet-to-be-named European qualifier that could be Denmark, the Republic of Ireland, North Macedonia or the Czech Republic as Group A’s final side.

A second-round place for the first time in Bafana’s history is a possibility, more so because with 48 teams participating in next year’s World Cup the eight best third-placed qualifiers go through to the round of 32. Should Bafana rustle up a win and sneak a draw, they could spend longer than usual in a tournament they seldom visit.

They might not have got to Mexico at all. At the Peter Mokaba Stadium in Polokwane in March they fielded Teboho Mokoena in a qualifier against Lesotho. They shouldn’t have. Mokoena brought two previous yellow cards into the game that meant he wasn’t eligible to play.

It took Fifa from March until late September to decide on South Africa’s sanction. When it came, it was heavy: Bafana’s original 2-0 win was overturned and the match was given 3-0 to Lesotho. At the time the blow felt crippling.

But Bafana, with captain Ronwen Williams and coach Hugo Broos at the helm, are nothing if not resilient. They even overcame a lacklustre 0-0 draw against Zimbabwe in their penultimate World Cup qualifier to finally prosper four days later against Rwanda.

Let the vuvuzelas rise. Mexico, here we come.

‘Six hours ago I was 71, now I am 75. It was a very stressful game.’

—  Hugo Broos

Broos, who will turn 74 in April, was appointed in May 2021 on a five-year contract. The Belgian has gone about his work with a conspicuous lack of histrionics. This suggests the Mokoena matter was the exception rather than the rule.

Bafana’s run in the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) in the Ivory Coast in 2024 is a case in point. Bafana reached the semifinals, losing to Nigeria on penalties, though they beat the DRC (also on penalties) to clinch the bridesmaid’s third place.

They were good value for going so far, though they started with a hiccup, losing 2-0 to Mali in their opener. A win against Namibia and a draw against Tunisia followed, with a 2-0 knockout victory over Morocco in the round of 16, making football folk the world over take notice. A penalty shootout win against Cape Verde in the quarterfinals continued the fairytale. It prompted the following gem from Broos: “Six hours ago I was 71, now I am 75. It was a very stressful game.”

In a couple of days, Broos and Bafana will have the opportunity to show the world that they are a growing force. In Morocco, in the 2025/2026 Afcon, they have been drawn with Egypt, Zimbabwe and Angola, whom they play first.

It’s a tricky group. Zimbabwe traditionally play out of their socks against their more prosperous southern neighbours. Egypt are always a force, though their shine might have faded slightly. Angola are not to be underestimated. Bafana’s crucial match is surely against Egypt; the two will play on Boxing Day in Agadir, in the south of the country.

Morocco was certainly Banyana Banyana’s happy place. They won the 2022 edition of the Women’s Afcon (Wafcon) there, postponed until 2023 because of Covid, beating the hosts in the final. Again in Morocco, they went on in this year’s tournament in July to finish in fourth place overall.

Their early form in the 2025 Wafcon was encouraging. They picked up wins against Ghana and Mali before beating Senegal 4-1 on penalties in the quarterfinals. This put them face-to-face with Nigeria in the semis. As a player, Banyana coach Desiree Ellis was seldom lucky against Nigeria, and so it proved again, Banyana going down 2-1, later losing on penalties to Ghana in the third-place playoff.

For the third consecutive Wafcon, Morocco will again be hosts in 2026. Ellis’s Banyana qualified for next year’s showpiece event in October with a nail-shredding 2-1 aggregate victory over the DRC. With 16 participating teams, next year’s finals will be played in March and April.

It was a good year for women’s sport in South Africa, as they contributed handsomely to the export drive. In October, the nation’s women cricketers played in the 50-over World Cup in India, where conditions were so alien they might as well have been playing on the Sea of Tranquility.

Here they overcame a bad case of first-night nerves against England in their opening game to have a charmed run before meeting them in the semifinal. Their skipper, Laura Wolvaardt, scored 169, a tournament-defining knock.

On the back of it, South Africa posted 319 for seven; England didn’t get remotely close in their chase, losing by 125 runs to catapult Wolvaardt’s team into the final against India.

It was a match South Africa lost but could have won, given they beat India in the round-robin phase of the tournament. On balance, given the conditions and the appreciative but mildly hostile crowds, to have reached the final was miraculous.

Another final took place in the rain in Tokyo in September, where South Africa’s 4x400m athletes were beaten into bronze by a hair’s breadth by Botswana and the US in the World Athletics Championships. In the third leg, South Africa’s Wayde van Niekerk ran a 43.23 split, the fastest lap of the event, leading some to suggest that it was the greatest lap ever in a 4x400m final.

It might have been. We will see in the coming years (the next Olympics are 2028) if Van Niekerk has finally regained his confidence after an anterior cruciate ligament injury threatened to hobble the 400m world record holder forever. He was once poised, let’s not forget, to be one of the greatest athletes of all time. The claim might not be that far-fetched, after all.