Stephen Donald has stood on the field for a World Cup final. He was working in France in 2023 for the opener and the final too. He says none of it was as loud as a team sheet being read out in Cape Town.
“You’ve never heard noise like it. I’m telling you, that French World Cup opener and the final, it didn’t compare.”
That is an enormous claim, and it came in an episode about whether Ardie Savea and Siya Kolisi now carry the same thing. So is Donald right, or is that three weeks in South Africa talking? The comments are open.
Donald covered the first three Tests of this series for Sky Sport NZ and has just flown home. Savea will play no further part in it, having gone back with a dislocated shoulder that ruled him out of the Baltimore Test. On Thursday’s episode of The Aftermatch with Kirst & Beav, Donald was asked about the standing Savea has built in South Africa. He answered by talking about the crowd instead, and about who it was roaring for.
A viewer said Savea has the same presence in South Africa as Kolisi
The episode was a mailbag. Co-host Kirstie Stanway read out viewer questions, and one of them, from a viewer she named as Mike, put the claim on the table.
“I must say I think Ardie Savea is one of the best rugby players I have ever seen. What a player. I hope he gets well soon.”
Stanway then pushed it further herself, saying she thought Savea now has “the same godlike presence as Siya Kolisi does in South Africa.”
Donald did not water it down.
“[You’ve] got these two colts as the leaders of their two teams who are like heroes in the rugby world now… it sort of probably amplifies it, certainly from Ardie’s side, being a foreigner in South Africa but yet so much love towards him.”
Savea captained the side trying to take the series off the Springboks in their own country. Those crowds had waited fifty years for a home series win over New Zealand.
He is the opposition captain, and he was getting something back from the stands that opposition captains do not usually get. It is a version of the same relationship Savea has described himself, calling Kolisi the enemy for 80 minutes and a friend either side of it.
The comparison Donald made is bigger than it first sounds
Here is the passage in full.
“Seeing the South African fans’ response to Siya and the boys, particularly from the Cape area in that Cape Town Test… you’ve never heard noise like it. I’m telling you, that French World Cup opener and the final, it didn’t compare. The noise that there was around for the naming of Kolisi and Kolbe, or Willemse and all those local Cape boys, was unbelievable.”
A New Zealand broadcaster has just said a routine pre-match team announcement in Cape Town beat the biggest night in the sport.
And the names are the point. Cheslin Kolbe was born in Kraaifontein, thirty kilometres from the ground. Damian Willemse grew up in Strand, on the other side of False Bay, and started that Test at fullback. Kurt-Lee Arendse came through in the Western Cape too.
That crowd was cheering neighbours as much as internationals. The stadium was reacting to postcodes as much as to caps.
Kolisi is the exception in Donald’s list. He is from Zwide, in Gqeberha, a 750-kilometre drive up the N2, and he is not a Cape boy by birth.
He is a Cape player by adoption, and that stadium is his club home. A Gqeberha man gets the same welcome there as men who grew up twenty minutes away. That tells you how far past geography his standing has travelled.
Read also: how the Springboks turned four visits to the New Zealand 22 into a Cape Town win — the match that noise was the prelude to.
Kolbe will not be in Baltimore either. He suffered a broken jaw nine minutes into Soweto and faces eight to ten weeks out.
Former Springboks kept telling him the same thing about Savea
What Donald reported next carries more weight, because the words were not his.
“I was talking to boys who have been there, done that themselves, South Africans, and they’re blown away by him… he’s not this monster of a physical athlete, but when he plays, he carries like he must be just Jonah reincarnated at times. Like how he can break tackles, he’s phenomenal.”
Start with who is doing the admiring. These are former Springboks, men who have played the biggest Tests there are. Over three weeks they kept telling a New Zealand broadcaster that the opposition captain was the best thing they were watching. Nobody hands that over for free.
Then there is the Jonah Lomu comparison, which a New Zealander does not make casually and which Donald undercuts in the same breath. He is explicit that Savea is not built like that. Lomu was 6ft 5in and nineteen stone. Savea is 6ft 2in and gives away size to almost every back row he packs down against.
Watch his feet in the last two steps before contact
Everyone files this under “powerful”. Wrong word. Savea beats the tackler before the tackle happens, and by the time he arrives the defender’s best option has already gone.
Watch the last two strides before a defender commits. Savea shortens them. Most carriers lengthen into contact, because a long final stride feels like it generates force, and it does.
It also tells the tackler exactly where the hips will be and exactly when. Shortening gives the carrier a choice the defender cannot read in time. He can step, drop his level, or drive off either foot, and the tackler has to guess.
So watch for that next time the highlight package comes round. Not the contact. The two steps before it.
It is also why the World Rugby Player of the Year award in 2023 is the only one he has. Donald flagged that himself, and he is right on the fact and probably right on the grievance.
“He’s world player of the year I think only once, but he’s probably deserved it a few times.”
What Ardie Savea and Siya Kolisi are actually being cheered for
Back to the crowd, because it explains the whole episode.
Test rugby produces two kinds of aura. One is built on performance and moves with form. The other is built on what a player is understood to represent, and it does not move at all.
Kolisi has had the second kind since 2019, and Trevor Nyakane has explained why Kolisi never raises his voice to get it.
What Donald watched over three weeks was Savea acquiring the same thing in somebody else’s country. A crowd applauds a performance. This was something else: recognition of a person, from people with every competitive reason to withhold it.
The noise at DHL Stadium was a crowd telling its own players they belonged to the place. The thing Donald noticed is that the same crowd had decided the man in the black jersey belonged to something too.
Read next: When a fan got onto the pitch in Soweto, security reached him first and Kolisi did something nobody expected — the clearest thirty seconds of evidence for everything above.
Your turn
So back to the question at the top. Was Donald right, or was that three weeks in South Africa talking? The best evidence is your own. Everyone has one moment where a crowd made the hair stand up on their arms, and it is almost never the try everybody remembers. For Donald it was a team sheet read out in Cape Town. What was yours?
Frequently asked
What did Stephen Donald say about Ardie Savea and Siya Kolisi?
Speaking on The Aftermatch with Kirst & Beav on 10 September, Donald agreed with a viewer and with co-host Kirstie Stanway that the two captains now hold a comparable standing in the game, and said the affection shown to Savea in South Africa is amplified by the fact that he is the opposition captain.
Was Cape Town really louder than the 2023 World Cup final?
The comparison is Donald’s own, based on being present at both. He said the noise for the reading of the local Cape players’ names at DHL Stadium meant the 2023 opener and final “didn’t compare”. It is a personal judgement, not a measurement.
Which players was the Cape Town crowd reacting to?
Donald named Kolisi, Cheslin Kolbe and Damian Willemse. Kolbe is from Kraaifontein and Willemse from Strand, both in the Western Cape. Kurt-Lee Arendse also came through in the province. Kolisi is from Zwide in Gqeberha but has made that stadium his club home.
How many times has Ardie Savea won World Rugby Player of the Year?
Once, in 2023, when he beat Eben Etzebeth, Antoine Dupont and Bundee Aki to the award.
Why is Ardie Savea not playing in Baltimore?
He dislocated his shoulder and was one of nine All Blacks who flew home from Johannesburg rather than travelling to the United States for the fourth Test.
Stephen Donald was speaking on The Aftermatch with Kirst & Beav, Sky Sport NZ, published Thursday 10 September. Quotes are from that episode.
