Siya Kolisi’s 100 Test caps are a national mood. We sing, we post and we buy the commemorative shirts. It feels right to celebrate him: the boy from Zwide who became a double World Cup-winning captain.
In most writing about Kolisi, we lean hard on that “from nothing to everything” arc – the child drinking sugar water in Zwide who emerged from poverty into a sport that shows no mercy to reputation, background or expectation, who earned every cap through serious injuries and daily graft. That story matters. It gives us hope and makes us proud. But it can also blur the cost. Behind the fireworks sits a tougher question: what kind of body, and what kind of brain, does it take to get there?
This essay is a small act of care: to honour Kolisi’s achievement while being honest about concussion – holding two truths at once: joy and pride, and also worry and responsibility.
I am not a rugby player, a brain researcher or anything like that. I am a South African parent who watched my 11-year-old suffer a mild concussion after a heavy tackle. He rested for weeks. The headaches and that cloudy feeling lingered, and he did not always have the words to say what was wrong. One search became two, then many, and the algorithm pushed me to two documentaries: RugbyPass’ The True Price of Concussion in Rugby, and 1News’s KNOCKED ON about former All Black Carl Hayman.
I watched, paused, rewatched and took notes. The documentaries speak plainly about concussion – not with gloss, but with domestic truth. I was not just a Springbok supporter; I was on a crash course in brain safety, trying to keep Saturday joy from becoming Monday regret. That journey took me from medical websites, and the latest research on sport and concussion, to more rugby documentaries, and back to my child’s bedroom, listening softly for any sentence that began with: “My head feels funny.”
Brain injury
Let us slow down and demystify the word “concussion”. Concussion is a brain injury, not “just a knock” or “a bit dazed”. When the head is hit or jolted, the brain moves rapidly inside the skull. That movement stretches delicate nerve fibres, like pulling an elastic band too far. In simple terms: the brain gets shaken and temporarily stops working properly.
Sometimes the signs are obvious – being knocked out, confusion, poor balance. Other times they are delayed and sneaky: dizziness, nausea, mood swings, sleep problems or just feeling “not quite myself”. The dangerous part is that the worst symptoms often appear many hours later, long after the crowd has gone home and the jerseys are in the wash.
In 2022, an international concussion group met in Amsterdam and updated the tools we use. They introduced SCAT6, a more detailed checklist for memory, balance and symptoms, and they stressed gradual “return-to-learn” and “return-to-play”, especially for children and teenagers.
That phrase sounds technical. It simply means: first rest, then bring back schoolwork and exercise step by step, and stop if symptoms return. Biology, not bravery or the fixture list, should decide when someone is ready. Yet in rugby culture, we often quietly flip that order, treating commitment to the team as more important than care for the brain.
The RugbyPass documentary names that culture clearly. One voice talks about “a real culture in rugby of rubbing some dirt on it and just keep on going”. The documentary calls concussion a “phantom injury” because you can’t see it like a broken leg. That invisibility is dangerous.
Peter Robinson – whose son Ben died after a number of head knocks in a school match – repeats one line: “Don’t give concussion a second chance.” It sounds dramatic, but it’s practical. The second hit, before the brain has healed, can be catastrophic. The discipline we need is simple and hard at once: recognise, remove, rest, and only then talk about returning.
Protocols
To be fair, rugby authorities are not asleep. World Rugby’s Head Injury Assessment (HIA) Protocol gives medics the right to remove a player during the game, test again after the match and reassess the next day. The protocol is blunt: you can diagnose concussion at the sideline, but you cannot rule it out there. Hence the mantra, “recognise and remove”, not “watch and hope”.
In England, the Rugby Football Union’s Headcase programme offers concussion education for players, parents, referees and coaches. Here at home, BokSmart puts it plainly: concussion is a brain injury, and you must follow a stepwise return. These tools don’t remove risk, but they can shift habits – if we actually follow them.
Beyond 80 also shows how easily those habits can fail in real life. Canada’s Jamie Cudmore remembers a European semi-final: a heavy blow, “bees buzzing” in his head, vomiting, sleepless nights – then another match too soon.
He later admitted that if he had truly understood the danger, he would have taken himself off. Journalist Sam Peters recalls a period when head injuries were spiking but official statements stayed soothing. Referee Nigel Owens speaks about how jokes about “toughing it out” slowly gave way to seriousness. Together they show that rules help, but pressure and pride can bend judgement in the heat of a match. Structures must protect players from their bravest, most short-sighted selves.
Culture and money matter just as much as medicine. Former Samoa international Dan Leo describes contracts for lower-league players that penalise them for missing games and bonuses. If your rent depends on playing on Saturday, keeping quiet about headaches can feel like the logical choice.
Australian scrumhalf Nic Berry retired at 27 after repeated concussions; his wife once admitted she sometimes only cared “whether he was conscious” after games. That is not a dramatic quote; it is a marriage under stress. Changing that pressure is policy work as much as medical work. Competitions must reward honesty, not silence. Medics need independence. Contracts and team cultures must never punish players for telling the truth about symptoms.
Science itself offers no simple guarantees, and that makes people uneasy. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a degenerative brain disease seen after death in many contact-sport athletes. In plain language, it is long-term brain damage linked to years of hits. In the documentary KNOCKED ON, doctors use the phrase “probable CTE” for former All Black Hayman because you can’t confirm the condition while someone is alive.
Research suggests that longer careers and more head impacts raise the risk of later-life problems like memory loss, mood changes and impulsivity, but do not make them inevitable. New ideas such as saliva tests and instrumented mouthguards are being trialled to flag dangerous loads, but they are tools, not magic shields.
Overwhelming
KNOCKED ON adds a human ledger to the medical talk. Hayman describes ordinary tasks that now feel overwhelming: a noisy shop, bright lights, simple errands. The cameras follow him at home with his family, not only in slow-motion collisions. That choice matters. It translates neurology into daily life. We see how partners often notice first – repeated forgetfulness, a short fuse, or exhaustion that never quite lifts.
These stories ask a hard question of South Africans who love “tough rugby”: what does toughness look like in a kitchen, years after the last whistle? Maybe real toughness includes telling the truth about damage, seeking help, and refusing to sacrifice your brain to prove your loyalty.
So where does Kolisi fit in? He is our captain, our symbol of what is possible, and now a centurion. He has strapped his head more times than we can count and taken thousands of impacts from school fields to Test arenas.
We do not know his personal medical history, and we should respect that privacy. But we can say this: any player with 100 Test caps has almost certainly had concussions and countless smaller blows along the way. In the modern game, longevity is a medical achievement as much as a sporting one. It rests on care, rest, luck and the courage to listen to your own body – especially when the stadium is roaring and a nation is watching.
These films and studies pushed me to think beyond the stadium and into the lounge. In Beyond 80, a player’s wife says that after certain games she didn’t recognise the man she married.
He came home needing a dark, quiet room. He was irritable, sensitive to light and noise, not the gentle partner she knew. Another player talks about feeling dizzy in a supermarket queue – “I had to sit down a few times”. These are not gossip stories. They are reminders that concussion does not stay on the field. It follows people into parenting, partnership and the everyday work of loving others while your brain is not quite itself.
Recognise and remove
After my son’s knock, we tried to live the “recognise and remove” principle at home. We saw a clinician, and respected the slow pace of brain healing. We watched for delayed symptoms: headaches, nausea, irritability, sleep changes, balance wobbles. I rewatched Beyond 80 and felt slightly less helpless. The point was not to frighten him out of rugby. It was to normalise speaking up and to show that adults – not children – must carry the burden of caution. The message in our house is simple: your brain is more important than any match report or coach’s praise.
If we want fewer brain injuries, we must change the weekly incentives around the game. Medical independence during matches must be non-negotiable: team medics should answer to neutral supervisors, not to coaches whose jobs depend on winning.
Contracts must never punish players for reporting symptoms honestly. Youth tournaments need to retire the “play through” myth and normalise sitting out without shame.
Schools and unions should adopt staged return-to-play guidelines fully and show parents how they are doing it. Technology can help us measure impacts, but culture still decides whether a dizzy player feels safe to put up a hand and say, “something’s wrong”.
Let’s bring it closer to home. BokSmart has made real strides with age-group guidelines, educational videos and return-to-play timelines that ordinary families can understand. Still, Saturday club rugby is mostly run by parents, schoolmasters and community coaches with other jobs.
On those touchlines we need one clear rule: suspected concussion means removal and medical follow-up, full stop, even if it’s the star flyhalf. Our children don’t need bravado; they need adults who model caution. The professional game sets the tone. When the Boks accept HIA decisions in tight Tests without drama, schools take note. When referees enforce head-contact laws firmly, parents learn that safety is part of rugby, not an enemy of it.
Fans have power, too. We choose what we cheer. Applaud when a player is taken off for assessment; don’t boo the medic walking them off. Cheer the replacement who runs on; don’t create pressure on the injured player to “tough it out”.
Our rugby culture is family, braai smoke, church on Sunday and tight communities that argue and laugh together. Let’s weave head safety into that ethic. Retire the joke that a player “just needs a klap and a Coke”. Replace it with Peter Robinson’s line from Beyond 80: “Don’t give concussion a second chance, because it will wipe you out.” That is not softness; it is serious love.
So, yes, celebrate Siya Kolisi’s 100 caps. Celebrate the journey from township fields to two World Cups and a century of Tests. Celebrate how he carries the jersey, the anthem and the messy hope of this country.
But widen the frame.
The same courage we praise on Saturday must include the courage to walk off the field on Sunday, to tell the truth about symptoms on Monday, and to rest on Wednesday when the head still hurts. If we get that right, the next Springbok centurion will not only lift trophies; they will remember the journey clearly and live well long after rugby. That, more than any medal, would honour Kolisi – and protect the next Siya running out barefoot onto a dusty school field. DM