Springbok captain Siya Kolisi reveals retirement plans

Springbok captain Siya Kolisi reveals retirement plans

Springbok captain Siya Kolisi has laid out a possible timeline for his retirement while revealing what he intends to do after he hangs up his boots.

Kolisi said recently that he would consider how he feels at the end orf his three-year contract with Racing 92.

Siya Kolisi reveals retirement plans

The Springbok skipper is eager to dive into the work of his charitable foundation once he retires.

“I’ve signed for three seasons (at Racing), so we’ll see how that goes. I still want to play for another five years if the body is still good,” Kolisi said on the Behind the Ruck Podcast.

“The foundation is mine and Rachel’s [his wife] – the Kolisi Foundation. We started after the 2019 World Cup. During Covid, we started with food donations and PPC because public hospitals and public clinics were the last people to get it. We bought PPC for them, sanitisers, gloves and all the stuff so they can help people.

“We also needed to help people stay at home. I knew coming from the township [Zwide], when I was hungry, I would go out and ask my neighbour, so I thought, ‘Okay, let’s donate food.’

“We couldn’t do a lot, it was only 500, but we donated for three months. The meals were enough, or the grocery was enough; it could fill six people for a month. I know how it is in the community, we always share.”

Lifting people up

Kolisi believes that there is nothing more important than the work of uplifting people and giving them hope.

“People grow up in the townships, it’s poor, but the stuff that you learn there, ubuntu, I learned all of that there, people are resilient,” he added.

“They say people are lazy in the townships, but I grew up in a place where my uncles, my dad, my grandfather, they used to wake up at four in the morning, go stand on the side of the highway to wait for someone to pick them up so they can cut their grass or do any kind of work.

“The hard work and the resilience, that all comes from there, and also not complaining when you don’t have stuff, and using what you have around you. That’s who we are as South Africans.

“That’s why when the pressure moments come, that’s easy, it’s a game. We get pressure moments every single day, and I think that’s what drives us as a group because we know what people are going through.

“Me coming from that kind of background…when I was there, I was just thinking about survival, making it through the day, getting a meal for that day, but now people can look at us and you know what, ‘I can start dreaming about becoming Springbok captain, I can start dreaming of winning a World Cup because they’ve done it.’”