South Africa's Top Sports

Soccer, Rugby and Cricket (The Big 3 Sports)

Soccer

Soccer in South Africa is the most popular and widely played sport in our country. It is the people’s game world wide and it has especially won the hearts of South Africa’s people.

Black soccer players in South Africa are well known for their great and often stunning ball-sense and technical skills when they play the game. School teams and local and national league teams plus a multitude of knock-out cups, are followed with the same passion as in many other countries, by paint-daubed, costumed, whistling and cheering fans. Thankfully.

For many South Africans this was a proud moment and was then that we affectionately started nicknaming our national soccer team the “Bafana Bafana”, which means “The Boys”. They qualified twice for the world’s premier soccer event, the World Cup. For African standards this no mean feat. When in South Africa, There is probably no quicker way to “break the ice” with the man in the street than starting a conversation about soccer. 

Rugby

Currently South Africa is home to the World Cup, the World Sevens Series, the Super 14 Trophy and they also won the 2009 three test series against the British Lions.

Historically Rugby was a kind of gentleman’s game played by well-to-do college students in England. It followed that when the game was introduced in South Africa during the Colony years, it was mainly played by the upper class white people. 

Stadium in Early days

And so Rugby was looked at as the white man’s game during the apartheid years and even more so as the game of the Afrikaner. Soccer on the other hand, became the game of the black community of our country. 

On the 23rd of March 1992 the non-racial South African Rugby Union and the South African Rugby Board were merged to form the non-racial South African Rugby Football Union, the overall governing body of Rugby in South Africa. In 2005 the name was changed to South African Rugby Union. 

Well Developed Stadium. 

Tri Nations rugby

Following the success of the 1995 Rugby World Cup there was great demand for more regular competition between the southern hemisphere Rugby superpowers. 

In 1996 the Tri-Nations Rugby tournament was born, an annual competition between Australia, New Zealand and South Africa to decide which country and team will be the Rugby champion in the southern Hemisphere.


Cricket

The Currie Cup became the established national championship. It was named after Sir DonaldCurrie who donated the Trophy like he did with Rugby. In South Africa we used to have two domestic Currie Cup competitions, the Cricket Currie cup and the Rugby Union Currie Cup, each one with its own Currie Cup trophy.

rugby

Things came to a head and South Africa was banned from international cricket. This came at a time when South Africa was unquestionably the strongest in world cricket.In spite of the fact that it was deprived of international competition, South Africa’s cricket went from strength to strength. 

Although they were not able to play international test matches during the period of isolation (1970 to 1991), the provincial teams were improving with time and when the international ban was lifted in 1991, South Africa was recognized as a force to be reckoned with in international cricket. 

History of Cricket Bats