Robbie Fleck made Siya Kolisi Stormers captain at 25, and on Friday he explained why in a sentence that was not about Kolisi at all.
“I was captivated by what he said and it was something that… we were generally missing as a group. Well, I felt it was something that was probably missing from me as the leader of the Stormers.”
A head coach, on live television, naming a quality his own leadership was short of. How many coaches would say that out loud? Have a go in the comments.
Fleck was on SuperSport’s Boks Unpacked, a day before Kolisi leads South Africa out in Baltimore with a series against New Zealand in his hands. Jean de Villiers asked him about a wedding in 2016.
The speech Fleck was not supposed to be listening to
Kolisi married at Franschhoek on 13 August 2016. De Villiers was there. So was Fleck, six months into the Stormers job with a captaincy to fill.
De Villiers remembered the two of them at the bar afterwards, and Fleck saying he had just worked out who his captain would be.
Asked what he had actually heard, Fleck did not mention rugby once.
“At the wedding he stood up there and it was raw. It wasn’t a prepared speech… his leadership quality is raw, and it’s genuine, and that’s the beauty about it.”
Nobody at a wedding is being assessed. That is why Fleck trusted it.
Why Robbie Fleck made Siya Kolisi Stormers captain
He named him ahead of the 2017 Super Rugby season, about five months later. Kolisi was 25 and had been a Springboks squad player since his debut in 2013. He had never led a professional side.
The usual version of this story has the coach spotting potential and building it. Fleck ran it the other way. He heard a 25-year-old speak at a party and hired him to supply what the coach was short of.
Read also: Ardie Savea and Siya Kolisi now carry the same aura — a New Zealand broadcaster on what three weeks in South Africa showed him.
Six years earlier he had no furniture
Kevin Foote was sitting beside Fleck in the studio. He has just won back-to-back World Rugby U20 Championships with the Junior Springboks. Sixteen years ago he was coaching at UCT when Kolisi arrived from Grey High School.
Kolisi was not picked. He came anyway.
“We got him to UCT. He actually never played, but he was more around the team than anyone else. He’s just like that.”
Public records list Kolisi in the Ikeys squad for 2010, so that is Foote’s memory rather than the record book. His point is the turning up.
Then the furniture.
“Yeah, we did… I remember he didn’t have any furniture. Him and Scarra… So we got… a bakkie to fetch us and we went off to my father-in-law’s house and got some furniture out for them.”
A bakkie is a pickup. Scarra is Scarra Ntubeni, the hooker who came through Western Province alongside him and later stood as one of his best men.
Two young players in an empty flat, and two coaches driving across Cape Town with somebody else’s furniture in the back.
The night he rang his coach instead of the police
Then the phone call.
“And they phoned us one night — there were guys breaking into their complex. I said, why don’t you phone the police? He’s probably got a better option than me… Him and Scarra were hiding behind the curtain.”
Two future Springboks, one curtain.
And when something frightening happened at night, the first number Kolisi had was his coach’s.
Sixteen years on, Foote mentioned this.
“Siya did our jersey hand-out this year before we went to the World Cup.”
The teenager they furnished a flat for handed out the jerseys to Foote’s Junior Springboks before they flew out to defend a world title. Kolisi has since returned to the Stormers, back where Fleck put the armband on him.
The reluctant captain nobody had to persuade
The last part of Fleck’s answer explains why the appointment held.
“A lot of people read books about leadership and they try and be a leader their whole lives. He was a reluctant leader, right? He never wanted the job. But he grew into it, and the beauty about him is that he’s made mistakes along the way and he’s learned by those mistakes and he’s become better for it. And those are the best leaders.”
That reluctance never went away. It runs all the way to a captain who never raises his voice, as Trevor Nyakane described last month.
Watch him on Saturday in the two minutes before kick-off, when the cameras find the captains. Kolisi is almost never the one talking.
He moves down the line and stops at individuals, one at a time. It is the wedding reception again, table by table.
He was doing that at nineteen too, at a club that had not picked him.
Read next: When a fan got onto the pitch in Soweto, security reached him first and Kolisi did something nobody expected — thirty seconds that make Fleck’s answer look obvious.
Your turn
Fleck picked a captain on a wedding speech and admitted the player had something he was short of. Most coaches pick on caps, or on the loudest voice in the changing room.
So which is it: was Fleck brave, or did he get lucky with a player who was always going to be this? And if you have ever picked a captain at any level, what was the moment you actually decided?
Frequently asked
What did Robbie Fleck say about Siya Kolisi?
On SuperSport’s Boks Unpacked on 11 September 2026, Fleck said Kolisi’s wedding speech was raw and unprepared. He said the quality it revealed was “probably missing from me as the leader of the Stormers”.
When did Siya Kolisi become Stormers captain?
Fleck appointed him ahead of the 2017 Super Rugby season. He kept the role for the rest of Fleck’s tenure, which ran to 2019, and became Springboks captain in June 2018.
Did Siya Kolisi play for UCT?
Kevin Foote, who coached at UCT when Kolisi arrived in Cape Town, said Kolisi “actually never played” but was around the squad more than anyone. Public records list him in the Ikeys squad for 2010, so the two accounts do not match.
Who helped Siya Kolisi when he first moved to Cape Town?
Foote and Dave Wessels, then both at UCT. Foote said they fetched furniture from his father-in-law’s house in a bakkie for the empty flat Kolisi shared with Scarra Ntubeni.
Is Siya Kolisi captaining the Springboks in Baltimore?
Yes. He leads South Africa against New Zealand at M&T Bank Stadium on Saturday 12 September, 17:00 local time. The Springboks are 2-1 up and a win or a draw takes the series.
Robbie Fleck and Kevin Foote were speaking on SuperSport’s Boks Unpacked, published Friday 11 September. Quotes are from that episode; names and South African spellings have been corrected from the auto-captions, and cuts are marked.
