Rory Petzer

CHAMPIONS! Duty calls. All of it. All weekend long. You’ll be reading this on Thursday, Heritage Day, with the Proteas already out there in Durban, kicking off their ODI series against Australia at Hollywoodbets Kingsmead. The game starts at 10:00. From there, my Champions, the calendar does not let up. This is a proper national assembly of a sporting weekend, and every South African has a job to do. On Saturday, Bafana Bafana take on Guinea at Orlando Stadium at 15:00. It's a new era under a new coach. Pitso Mosimane takes charge of the first match of his third stint at the helm, and there’s no friendly to ease him in. This is South Africa’s opening 2027 AFCON qualifier. SAFA is calling on Soweto to pack the stadium and mark the beginning of this new chapter. Champions, when SAFA asks nicely, we should really answer. Also on Saturday, the Springbok Women face Italy at Stadio Omero Tognon in Pordenone. Kickoff is at 14:30 SA time. The Springbok Women will be looking to bounce back in a hurry. Wales handed them a brutal 50 to 19 defeat at Cardiff Arms Park last week, making it back-to-back losses for our side after they also fell to the Black Ferns earlier this month. Higher-ranked Italy won’t make it easy. On Sunday, the Springboks face the Wallabies at Optus Stadium in Perth. Kickoff is at 11:45 SA time. This one comes with a genuine piece of history attached: Andre Esterhuizen will become the 68th player to captain the Springboks, earning his first taste of the armband in

CHAMPIONS! I need to start this week's piece differently, because it's been a different kind of week. I've been thinking about the women of South Africa all week. This is not the usual way I open my weekly feature with an exciting sporting observation or scoreline. I've been thinking about the women because of the bodies of women found in the Kempton Park area over the past two months, the search for missing runner Elizabeth "Tsontso" Moselakgomo that gripped the country, and the fear that's settled over so many women, simply going about their ordinary lives - running, walking, existing. And it's made me sit with something uncomfortable: how much I, as a man, simply don't think about. I can lace up my shoes and go for a run at 5am, alone, and the only thing on my mind is my pace. I can get into an e-hailing car by myself at night and not send my location to a friend, and not stay on the phone with someone "just in case." I can go for a hike with just my dogs. None of that is bravery. It's just Tuesday. And it is not Tuesday for the women I know, and it hasn't been for a very long time. That gap, between what I get to take for granted and what the women of South Africa have to actively manage, every single day is worth sitting with, even for a paragraph, before I go back to writing about sport. And, it’s actually quite fitting that this week my focus is on the Proteas Women and their historic maiden tour of Zimbabwe. It’s a five match T20 international series played entirely a

CHAMPIONS! One of my favourite songs by one of my favourite bands, Counting Crows, is called ‘Raining in Baltimore’. I’ve been thinking about and listening to that song a lot ahead of Saturday’s ‘decider’ in Baltimore between the Springboks and All Blacks. I’m bringing this up immediately, almost out of nowhere, because what’s going to happen on Saturday night is the Springboks are going to be ‘Reigning in Baltimore’! See what I did there? I am quietly confident of this (and will happily eat humble pie if I’m wrong) for a few reasons, largely because the Springboks came back from losing the first Test match. We lost that one, as well as our number one spot in the world. This meant that not only did we have to win the next game to keep our hopes of winning the series alive, but we had to do so under immense pressure AND against the number one team in the world! And what did we do? We did just that! And then, at 1-all, we all went to FNB Stadium in Soweto under a cloud of low-flying planes and accusations of walking around in scrums. And what did we do? We forced the All Blacks to walk so far back in one scrum that we were awarded a penalty try! I’m not going to lie, I found a short video of that scrum on X, and I’ve watched it at least one hundred and twenty million, three hundred and two hundred thousand and four times. AND, I was at the game and saw it live! Wait, give me a few minutes. I want to watch it a few more times. @ruckrealm Yellow right after tho 😂#rugby #sp

CHAMPIONS! The best part about Saturday, the 5th of September at the FNB Stadium in Soweto isn’t that it will feature the third test match, Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry between the Springboks and the All Blacks, or that there will most likely be another Airlink Flyover that will be watched by the whole world, but rather that the action starts at 13h30. Yes, rugby fans have two massive clashes to look forward to on the day. In a repeat of the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup quarter-final, the Springbok Women will host the Black Ferns in a curtain-raiser at the FNB Stadium. The Springbok Women lost that game in 2025, 46-17, after a good first half that left both teams tied at 10 points. So, South African rugby fans will be looking and hoping for revenge this time round.  View this post on Instagram A post shared by Springboks (@bokrugby) OK! Let’s talk Springbok Men. Saturday is almost the decider with one more game in Baltimore the following week, but the team that wins this week cannot lose Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry. It’s humungous. Just thinking about sitting there on Saturday gives me goosebumps. And there has already been a lot of drama with New Zealand coach Dave Rennie accusing the Springbok scrum of ‘walking around’ as they engage, BUT photo evidence circulating on social media suggests it’s the All Blacks who are doing this. Rassie Erasmus was pretty vocal about it in a press conference this week with an uncharacteristic outburst that even included the ‘f’ wo

Champions, I still can't quite believe it happened. I was part of the Department of Sport, Arts, and Culture's Lucky Fans group selected to attend Bafana Bafana's World Cup match against South Korea in Mexico. The gees started the moment I landed at OR Tambo from Durban, before we'd even technically left South Africa - which tells you everything about how this trip was going to go. Singing, dancing, flags, and strangers who became family by the second layover. The gees followed us through Paris, Mexico City, and finally to Monterrey, where our delegation attended exclusive events alongside Minister Gayton McKenzie and SAFA President Danny Jordaan; casually rubbing shoulders with actual government officials while wearing a Bafana Bafana jersey, as one does. Then the game itself: the best live sporting event of my life, no debate, no runner-up. We were in tears when Thapelo Maseko scored. Full grown adults sobbing, hugging strangers, all dignity abandoned. It was a must-win, and we won, which is not a sentence South African football fans get to say often, so we milked it for all it was worth. I was lucky enough to be filming the exact moment the ball hit the net, so I’ll have that moment forever! Rory PetzerExploring Mexico Exploring Mexico Honestly, Mexico was never on my radar as a holiday destination, if I'm being embarrassingly honest. It is now firmly on the list, permanently, in pen. I only made it to Monterrey, and even that exceeded every expectation to the point wher