The Springbok Women may not be expected to emulate the men’s team in winning the Rugby World Cup, but heading into the upcoming tournament in England (August 22 – September 27), morale is at an all-time high.
South Africa head into the World Cup off the back of a 41-24 win over a second-string Black Ferns XV in Cape Town in their final home warm-up match.
Head coach Swys de Bruin said after the match: “I think we’re at a point now where all [the] players understand one another and the coaches understand them, so it doesn’t matter who goes on and off at what stage.
“If a player is slightly off form… we bring in the player on form. They feel comfortable now with one another and that’s what we wanted.
“They’ve got tons and tons of confidence and they needed this game just to know that they can do it.”
Babalwa Latsha, Africa’s first female player to turn professional, back in 2020, said: “I think we needed a mental switch.
“We needed to start believing that we actually are capable of… winning games – especially heading into the World Cup, where we want winning to feel familiar to us.”
Latsha served as captain on the day, but Nolusindiso Booi – who missed the match with injury – is the captain of the side and was named in the Bok Women’s World Cup squad.
South Africa only played their first women’s Test in 2004 and the women’s game has generally progressed slowly, even if surely, over the past two decades. The lowest moment arguably came when SA Rugby decided not to field a team for the 2017 World Cup due to poor results.
For South African women’s rugby, the next six years saw several steps forward and a few back.
Latsha became the first African women’s rugby player to turn professional in January 2020. In 2023, the Bulls Daisies became South Africa’s first professional rugby team. At the 2021 World Cup – played belatedly in 2022 in New Zealand – South Africa did field a team, but suffered a pool stage exit.
Paul Delport’s resignation as Women’s Sevens head coach and criticism of SA Rugby suggested that the old problems behind the scenes in the women’s game had not completely disappeared.
However, in the 15-a-side game, SA Rugby appear to have struck gold with the appointment of De Bruin. He took over from previous interim head coach Louis Koen last year, with de Bruin’s official title being the unconventional one of ‘Performance Coach’ until the World Cup. This is due to the fact that he is essentially coaching coaches as well as players.
Under the former Lions head coach’s wing is the highly regarded Bafana Nhleko. For now, the pair are working together, but when SA Rugby appoint a full-time long-term head coach, Nhleko appears to be the likely frontrunner.
South Africa will kick off their campaign against Brazil on Sunday. Their other two Pool D opponents will be France and Italy. The top two in each pool will advance to the quarter-finals.
France – ranked fourth in the world – are favourites to top the pool. The game against seventh-ranked Italy on August 31 is thus likely to be the decisive one for the Bok Women – who are ranked 12th. They also cannot afford to slip up against Brazil, ranked 25th.
The Springbok Women are still a work in progress, and de Bruin alluded to their need to be more clinical after the win over the Black Ferns XV, saying: “We had five scoring chances that we didn’t finish – or was it six?
“That shows you what they’re still capable of. We’re on our way there, but we haven’t arrived.”
