The Springbok team leader will reach the 100-Test mark this Saturday, in a match against France in Paris.
Siya Kolisi has already reached legendary status as the inspirational captain of the Springboks over the most successful period in the team’s history and is now set to reach even greater heights when he becomes his country’s ninth Test centurion.
He will achieve the feat against France in Paris on Saturday, in what many are dubbing a grudge match, as it is the first encounter between the teams since the Boks dumped France out of their home World Cup at the quarter-final stage in 2023.
Ahead of his landmark game, here are our picks of Kolisi’s five greatest moments over an incredible career, that is not yet over.
Becoming a Test centurion
One of the reasons for the Springboks’ prolonged success over the last six to seven years has to be due to the humility shown by the players and coaching staff. It’s like it has been programmed into them to not get full of themselves and they always talk about the team first. And Kolisi is no different.
As the leader of the team, he always talks about them ahead of himself.
Kolisi will without a doubt be immensely proud to join the other eight Springbok centurions, namely Percy Montgomery, John Smit, Victor Matfield, Jean de Villiers, Bryan Habana, Tendai Mtawarira, Eben Etzebeth and Willie le Roux, but he will turn attention to the clash against France, and only really acknowledge the milestone after the fact, if at all.
Winning a British and Irish Lions series
Outside of the World Cup and Rugby Championship, the once every 12 years that the British and Irish Lions tour comes to South Africa is right up there for the players. With the best picked from England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, under the Lions banner, it is always an eagerly anticipated spectacle that the Boks and their fans look forward to every dozen years.
Unfortunately, the most recent tour took place under the dark cloud of Covid back in 2021, which took a lot of the shine off of it, with no fans allowed in the stadiums. However, the action on the pitch was as tense as ever, with the Lions triumphing 22-17 in the first match, before the Boks bounced back to win the second Test 27-9 and edge the third 19-16 to clinch the series.
Kolisi, lucky enough to be in action at a time of a Lions tour, thus became just the second Springbok captain in the professional era, after John Smit, to lead his side to a British and Irish Lions series triumph.
Winning a full Rugby Championship, and retaining it
The Springboks had never won a full Rugby Championship by 2024, and had only won the shortened version once, during the 2019 Rugby World Cup year. The Boks had only won the previous iteration, the Tri Nations, three times, and since Argentina joined in 2012, only added one more title, meaning they had won just four of 28 editions by the end of 2023.
Going into 2024 as four-time World Cup champions highlighted how they needed to improve in the Southern Hemisphere competition.
And that they did with a dominant performance as they won five out of six games, suffering a single one-point loss with a fringe team in Argentina, and finished eight points clear of the second placed All Blacks.
In 2025 the Boks needed to back that showing up, and despite being given a sterner test than the previous year, Kolisi’s men did what was needed to retain the title for the first time in their history and prove that they aren’t just a flash in the pan.
Back-to-back World Cup triumphs
Before the 2023 Rugby World Cup in France, only one team in history had won back-to-back World Cups, Richie McCaw’s incredible All Blacks team in 2015. But by the end of the year Kolisi’s history-makers became the second, while also becoming the first four-time winners of the iconic Webb Ellis trophy. They were made to work incredibly hard for it, with three one-point wins, over France, England and the All Blacks in the quarters, semis and final to pull it off.
Between the 2019 and 2023 editions the Boks had proven to be very inconsistent, winning the British and Irish Lions series in 2021, but were unable to triumph in the Rugby Championship, while they would also triumph in big games, and lose matches they were expected to win. But on the biggest stage again they showed they had the BMT to do what was needed, and it ended with Kolisi lifting a second straight World Cup trophy in Paris.
Lifting the Webb Ellis Cup for the first time
Could there have been a more inspiring moment for young black sportsmen and women, than seeing the country’s first black Springbok captain, Siya Kolisi, lifting the Webb Ellis Cup above his head for the first time?
It was an incredibly iconic moment, and one that will live in the hearts of many South Africans, from different backgrounds and walks of life, for many years to come.
Also inspiring was that three players from the rural Eastern Cape, in Kolisi, Makazole Mapimpi, and Lukhanyo Am, played a major role in the final win over England.
Adding to the impressive feat was that in just over two years the Boks managed to drag themselves from the dirt to glory under the lights of Yokohama in Japan. In February 2018 Allister Coetzee was relieved of his duties as Bok coach, after two years of struggle, that had included record home and away losses of 57-15 in Durban and 57-0 in Albany against the All Blacks.
Just a year and a half later Rassie Erasmus and Kolisi led the Boks to glory on world rugby’s biggest stage, in one of the greatest recoveries in rugby history.
