Springboks fans have never been humble

A few years ago, Henry Pollock told me that he wanted to be “spoken about as a great of the game”.

He explained that one goal was simply an opportunity to move the posts further back. Winning a junior World Cup, making his international debut, beating New Zealand, lifting the Webb Ellis Cup and being named World Player of the Year were all merely “stepping stones”.

“I’m never satisfied,” he said.

Imagine the response if Pollock had actually said any of that. Picture the frothing replies, the bulging veins, the sudden concern for endangered values of rugby. Who does this blond English child think he is? Someone should wipe that smirk off his face.

Good thing, then, that none of the above is true. In reality those front-foot words belonged to Pieter-Steph du Toit, who shared them with me in 2021 ahead of the British & Irish Lions series. And rather than recoiling from his breathtaking self-belief, South Africans nodded along approvingly. Here was a man with standards. Here was a champion driven by destiny. Here was the relentless ambition that had made him great.

This is worth remembering the next time South Africans clutch their pearls over Pollock.

The young English flanker celebrates too loudly. He shushes crowds. He gesticulates, grins and appears conspicuously delighted with himself, especially when singing Olivia Dean hits with his shirt off. He is active on social media and seems to understand that professional sport is partly a branch of the entertainment industry. For all this, he has been called arrogant, obnoxious and windgat, that wonderfully textured Afrikaans word combining vanity, swagger and almost comic showmanship.

John Robbie, a former Ireland and Lions scrum-half who became a popular radio host in South Africa, recently suggested Pollock embodies everything South Africans, particularly Afrikaners, instinctively distrust. According to Robbie, the preferred South African rugby player is “quiet, dour, stiff-upper-lip, modest, thankful to God”. He contrasted Pollock with Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu, who supposedly lets his brilliance on the field do the talking.

There are two problems with that theory.

The first is that Feinberg-Mngomezulu is not especially humble either. He may not perform his confidence in precisely the same way as Pollock, but he has spoken openly about chasing records, winning individual honours and redefining what a South African fly-half can be. He told me last year that his clarity and confidence were sometimes misinterpreted, but that he intended to pursue success on his own terms.

The second problem is that South Africans are not, and have never been, naturally humble people.

Spend a Saturday night in the Village in uMhlanga. People-watch at Cafe Caprice at Camps Bay. Stand near the weights section of a suburban gym or allow yourself to be cornered at a braai by a man who once played first-team rugby at a decent school.

Within minutes, you will know how much he can bench, how many beers he drank on his birthday, what car he drives and how many tries he scored in 2004. He may also mention his school before revealing his profession, his surname or the fact that you have met several times before.

South Africans rank themselves constantly. Who is strongest? Who can down a pint the fastest? Who braais the best steak? Who went to the toughest school? Who could have gone pro if not for that knee injury and a coach with a personal agenda?

Even our humility is competitive. Nobody is more grounded than us. Nobody respects the opposition as intensely. Nobody devotes themselves to a greater cause like the Boks. Nobody understands that rugby is only a game quite like the nation that treats an under-13 schools fixture as a proxy war between civilisations.

This is not an argument against South Africans. The windgat is one of our great national archetypes. He is entertaining, ambitious and often capable of backing up his boasts. He does not enter a room so much as arrive in it, certain that everyone else has been waiting.

Besides, ambition is not the opposite of humility. Du Toit can speak about greatness and still be generous, hardworking, devoted to his team and deferential to his God. Feinberg-Mngomezulu can imagine himself breaking records without disrespecting those who came before him. Therefore, Pollock can believe he is destined for the summit without being a bad person.

The South African objection, it seems, is not really to confidence per se. It is to confidence expressed by somebody else.

We applied a similar standard to Ireland when they began puffing out their chests during the last World Cup cycle. Eben Etzebeth was irritated when Irish players allegedly told him, “See you in the final”, after beating South Africa in the group stage. He interpreted the remark as arrogance, evidence that Ireland were looking past New Zealand in the quarter-final.

Perhaps it was presumptuous. But Etzebeth had reportedly responded to the defeat by saying South Africa would get Ireland again “if they make it through”. Apparently one sentence was healthy Springbok conviction while the other represented an intolerable violation of rugby’s moral order.

The same sensitivity emerges whenever a particular New Zealand columnist suggests that South Africa’s time at the top may be nearing its end. Bok supporters do not respond with contemplative silence or indifference. They produce World Cup counts, scorelines, rankings, scrum montages and instructions to ‘cry more’.

Good. More of that.

These are unprecedented times. South Africa are back-to-back world champions, holders of the Rugby Championship and the world’s top-ranked men’s team. Their junior men are champions. The Blitzboks hold the Sevens gong. After beating Scotland 42-28 at Loftus, the Springboks had defeated every Six Nations team and all three Rugby Championship rivals inside a single 12-month span.

The women’s crown is the obvious piece missing from the collection, though the rapid progress of the Springbok Women suggests they are no longer content to remain peripheral to the story.

None of this will last forever. Rugby turns. Great players age, coaches leave and dominant systems are eventually decoded. One day, South Africans will again need to speak earnestly about rebuilding, character and lessons learned.

But that day has not yet arrived. So stop cosplaying as rugby’s monks. Stop insisting that South Africans are uniquely humble while attacking anyone with the nerve to advertise their greatness in a foreign accent.

Puff out your chest. Order another double brandy. Slap another chop on the braai. Count the trophies. Remind everyone who won the last two World Cups.

In short, be a little windgat. You, and the team you support, have earned the right.