'We’ve changed our lives forever': Why Bok Women's victory ranks so high

“Everything is changing now.”

Moments after playing a leading role in South Africa’s 29-24 victory over Italy, securing the Springboks’ first passage into the Rugby World Cup quarterfinals, Libbie Janse van Rensburg was conscious of the bigger picture.

She clung to her captain, Nolusindiso Booi, as if she’d never let go. Sweat poured from her body, tears streamed down her cheeks, a lump swelled on her forehead from a heavy knock, and yet her mouth stretched across her face in a smile that seemed permanent. She’d done it. South Africa had done it. Nothing would ever be the same again.

Success stories in South African rugby have always meant one thing: World Cup triumphs. It’s a crude metric, but it’s a bulletproof one. Golden trophies, ticker-tape parades, speeches of national unity, sweeping documentaries, Hollywood blockbusters; there’s no arguing with that sort of success.

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Where do we rank an imperfect five-point victory against the ninth best team in the world? If we’re relying on nothing more than crude metrics this is a footnote on a Wikipedia page. A talking point that fades before next weekend.

But South Africans know that the meaning of rugby – indeed any sense of meaning beyond the four corners of the pitch – are not measured by crude metrics alone.

The Springboks women’s first win against a top ten team on Sunday might not have earned them a golden trophy but unquestionably ranks alongside any other success achieved by their male counterparts in this sport.

Maybe it even tops the list. Sure the 1995 World Cup win was staggering and touched by the magic of Nelson Mandela, but it was achieved by a team who had been cutting their teeth in a highly competitive Currie Cup. These players were at the sharp end of a pyramid with a rich history of top level schoolboy rugby, immense public and political support as well as the backing of corporate sponsors. Ditto for the victories in 2007, 2019 and 2023.

South Africa’s women have had none of this. Things have been changing, but they are a budding flower in the shade of a giant oak. There is only one professional club in the entire country. Half of the national team squad remember a time when they needed a second job. Almost all of them could walk down a high street without being recognised. Not anymore.

“We’ve changed our lives forever,” van Rensburg said after the match. “This is the greatest thing we’ve ever done.”

Van Rensburg was just one player who produced the performance of her life. Aseza Hele, arguably the best number eight on the planet, was immense. She scored the first try off the back of a monstrous scrum in the second minute and rampaged across the ground with every carry until injury forced her off on the hour mark.

Nadine Roos was electric, starting from fullback and switching to scrum-half in the second half, the pocket rocket dotted down South Africa’s second when she ran a superb support line following van Rensburg’s dummy and break. That capped off a commanding 20 minutes that their coach Swys de Bruin called “perfect.”

The Italians responded. They found joy at line-out which twice allowed them to work space past the 13 channel, working an edge on South Africa’s fractured defence. Ayanda Malinga’s stunning score following a delicious inside pass from Chumisa Qawe just before the half hour ensured that a slender lead was held at the break.

South Africa fixed their porous defence after the interval and kept things tight. Their interplay among the forwards was noteworthy. So was their cohesion at the scrum and around the tight spaces. This is testament to the growing standard of women’s rugby in the country.

Because this win was procured not solely through heart and soul, though they played their part. De Bruin was keen to emphasize the “journeys” that his players have been on, that many grew up without fathers, that more than a handful know what it means to go to bed hungry, that they’ve all toiled in relative anonymity in front of empty stands and with little fanfare. But he also underlined the team’s ability and their understanding that guts only gets you so far.

The scrum continued to win penalties and their attacking maul yielded dividends. Malinga’s first half try was a thing of beauty, a first-phase move in which Roos exploded onto Qawe’s popped pass against the grain before unleashing Malinga down the left.

Roos revealed that de Bruin copied the move from an Australian Super Rugby team. Elsewhere women in green cleaned rucks with cold confidence and maintained their physicality either side of the ball throughout the 80 minutes.

All of this is a consequence of hard work on the training field, of extra hours in the gym, of discipline at the dinner table. This side has been transforming for some time.

Their internal growth has been far more rapid than the changing perceptions back home. They are still a relative sideshow, a consequence of the general apathy of South African sports fans and media houses – not a single national newspaper has so far sent a correspondent to cover the World Cup.

But everything is changing now.

What comes next may matter even more. This victory offers a glimpse of what South African women’s rugby could be if it’s given the chance to flourish.

It can inspire young girls in Mdantsane, Soweto, Stellenbosch, and rural villages alike to pick up a ball and dream of pulling on a green jersey.

It should force administrators, sponsors and broadcasters to treat these players not as a novelty, but as the pioneers they are. Sport has always been South Africa’s mirror: reflecting its fractures, but also its potential.

On Sunday, the Springboks women gave the country another reflection to cherish, one that is still forming, but already beautiful.

The next step is ensuring the flower is given sunlight enough to bloom.