2024: A Sporting Year In Review
From the 2024 Olympics, to the Rugby Championship, from a new Women's Marathon World Record to Bafana Bafana's AFCON performance, this year has been a fascinating and captivating one for sport.
From a sporting point-of-view, 2024 was the year of twos. Take two-Test series for one. The Proteas only played in two-Test series, as if counting to three – or even four – was entirely beyond Cricket South Africa’s capabilities, let alone their imagination.
For the record, they played two Tests against New Zealand, the West Indies, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. As we write, they’re on the cusp of another two-Test series, against Pakistan, with one of them in 2024, and another in 2025.
Two-Test series’ or not, by some trick of scheduling, the South Africans find themselves on top of the World Test Championship, although this is likely to change if Australia beat India in their five Test series over the coming weeks.
Quirks of scheduling aside, the Proteas have also won five of their last six Tests, so have begun to win when it matters. This said, they are an ordinary side, with self-evident fragilities everywhere.
Shukri Conrad, who chooses the side rather than a group of selectors of which he is part, has an often-unconventional take on team selection. This is one of the reasons why the Proteas at the moment are so compelling: they are one man’s vision rather than that of a collective.
It didn’t, for example, make immediate sense to pick seven batsmen and only four bowlers in their most recent Test against Sri Lanka at St George’s, but scoring 358 after Temba Bavuma had won the toss and batted was a good start.
There was parity – more or less – on the first innings and when South Africa again scored over 300 runs in their second dig it meant Sri Lanka had to score 348 runs batting last to win. The challenge was beyond them.
One of the four bowlers picked by Conrad was Dane Paterson, a journeyman who has been thrown a couple of bones over the years without ever having been given the impression by successive national coaches that he was ever part of their long-term plans.
At St George’s Park, the 35-year-old came into his own. He bowled a commanding length, nibbling the ball around, to record match figures of seven for 104. In keeping with our extended metaphor, one Test might roll into two, and you rather figure he might feature again before the year is out.
After a lull lasting a couple of years, the Proteas are scoring centuries again, with Bavuma, Ryan Rickelton, Tristan Stubbs and Kyle Verreynne all scoring tons against the Sri Lankans recently. There was a time – mainly under former Test skipper, Faf du Plessis – when this team were unable to reach three figures. Now there are tons of them.
It would be strange, indeed, if they went to Lord’s in the middle of 2025 as one of the two best teams in the world, given they haven’t had recent Test series against England or Australia. Their last Test series against India ended inconclusively – because it only consisted of two Tests – so a draw was always potentially on the cards.
Two-Test series were the order of the day in rugby too. In July, Ireland, the only team to beat South Africa in the 2023 Rugby World Cup, arrived for Tests in Pretoria and Durban on the back of a three-Test winning streak against the ‘Boks.
It was nip and tuck at Loftus, as the home side, wearing white jerseys and turquoise shorts, darted into a 13-3 lead, courtesy of a slick Kurt-Lee Arendse inside step after quick hands by Siya Kolisi and a couple of penalties by Handré Pollard.
Ireland scored their first try, rounded off by Jamie Osborne after intelligent work by James Lowe to keep the ball in play, to make it 13-8 at half-time to the ‘Boks. Lowe turned clown just after the break when, again, he tried to keep a kick in the field of play but could only slap the ball into Cheslin Kolbe’s path, for the winger to dot down – 20-8 to the Springboks.
The score remained thus until the last six minutes. Ireland scored their second try through a defence-splitting inside pass from prop Finlay Bealham to his hooker, Ronan Kelleher, who carved through the ‘Bok defence like a sharp knife slicing biltong. Connor Murray, up in support, scored the try.
South Africa scored their third – a penalty try – after a humungous shove with the Bomb Squad on to make it 27-15 with only minutes to go, but Ireland hadn’t quite finished their afternoon’s work. They put further numbers on their tally with a late score to the young Leinster lock, Ryan Baird, after Lowe again managed to keep the ball alive long enough for Baird to catch his pass.
The touchline conversion was missed, which meant that South Africa broke Ireland’s winning streak to run out 27-20 winners, each team scoring three tries. There were great expectations ahead of the second Test at King’s Park in a week’s time.
Test two was the complete opposite of the first, with Ireland leading 16-6 at half-time, thanks to Murray’s second try of the series after slick inside passing through the middle, and a trio of penalties to fly-half Jack Crowley.
Pollard pecked away at the lead with six second-half penalties of his own – the ‘Boks didn’t score a try in the match – to give the home side a 24-19 lead with ten minutes to go. A series-winning victory might have been likely but this was to discount the ambitions of Irish fullback, Ciarán Frawley.
First, he hit a sumptuous drop-kick from approximately 40 meters out to narrow the lead, before banging his second over from much the same distance in injury time. The visiting Irish fans were elated, hugging each other and doing little jigs of delight, as they celebrated their 25-24 win and a rare victory on South African soil
.Two was the magic number elsewhere. After starting breezily in the Champions League final at Wembley in early June, Borussia Dortmund rued several missed first-half chances as Dani Carvajal popped up to head Real Madrid into the lead after a Toni Kroos second-half corner.
It was a nice touch from one of the shorter men on the pitch. Carvajal didn’t seem to rise above those around him so much as rise below them, where he couldn’t be seen. There are many inventive ways to score goals. Carvajal had ghosted in and found his.
Later, Vinicius Junior made it 2-0 from a Jude Bellingham intercept and all was done and dusted. In the first half-hour Dortmund were rampant. Finally, it counted for nothing.
Bafana Bafana started their 2024 Africa Cup of Nations campaign in the Ivory Coast with a 2-0 defeat by Mali. I remember looking at the result and not being in the slightest surprised. I was too hasty.
Bafana contrived to lift themselves out of their group with a 4-0 win over Namibia – grins all round here – before drawing 0-0 with Tunisia. It was enough to propel them into the second round as Group E’s second-placed side behind Mali and ahead of Namibia on points difference.
The knock-outs was where the fun and games began, with South Africa taking on Group F’s winners Morocco, with two wins and a draw under their belt, in the last 16. It was a golden day for Bafana against Morocco, the 2022 World Cup semi-finalists. They won 2-0 thanks to an Evidence Makgopa strike and a stonker of a free-kick to Tebogo Mokoena.
The Moroccan goal-keeper, Yassine Bounou – otherwise known as “Bono” – stood in the left-hand half of his goals, as he arranged a four-man wall to his right, a situation that would appear to have had all angles covered.
Mokoena saw otherwise. He hit the injury-time free kick over the middle of the wall as it swooped and fell away from the diving Bono’s right hand. The celebrations lasted for a good long while.
Mokoena was again on hand to open South Africa’s scoring from the penalty spot against Cape Verde in the quarter-finals, after regulation and extra-time matters had failed to establish a winner. Only James Texeira succeeded from the sport for Cape Verde and, with Ronwen Williams inspired in the South African goal, Bafana ended up 2-1 penalty shoot-out winners.
Old foes, Nigeria, beckoned in the semi-final. Here Mokoena was again in the action from the spot, his penalty cancelling out William Troost-Ekong’s 67th-minute penalty in the 90th minute to push matters into extra time. The stalemate continued through extra-time and here Bafana were less fortunate. They made a hash of their penalties – Mokoena included – as Nigeria marched at their expense through to the final against the Ivory Coast, which the hosts won.
A footnote is in order here. Hosting the tournament appeared to be of little initial advantage for the Ivory Coast, with “Akwaba”, the happy elephant and official mascot, unable to rouse them sufficiently for them to play successful football. The Ivory Coast started well enough, coming away with a 2-0 win against Guinea Bisau in the tournament’s opening fixture, but disaster followed.
They lost by the odd goal to Nigeria before shipping four goals, three of them late, in their final group game against Equatorial Guinea. They finished third in their group as a result and, had provision not been made in an expanded second round for third-placed teams to qualify, the Ivory Coast would have been going home, although, as they were there already, it was simply a case – one might say – of staying there.
In the second round they were drawn against tough Senegal, whom they beat 5-4 on penalties, before equally tough encounters with high-flying Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo, both of which they won. In the final, buoyed by a growing sense of pride and accomplishment, they beat Nigeria 2-1, not bad for a team who lost twice in the group stage and were holding onto the tournament by the width of an elephant-hair bracelet.
South Africa started the tournament early this year ranked 65th in the world. They are currently ranked 57th in the world, in with a realistic chance of qualifying for both the next Afcon and the 2026 World Cup in the USA.
While I hear you harrumphing about being in 57th spot, consider this. There are currently 210 football teams in Fifa’s world ranking, with the lowest-ranked team in the world being San Marino, Eritrea falling out of the listings because they have not played in the last four years.
If you are continuing with your harrumphing, consider, too, that India, Israel, the Philippines, Ghana, Iceland, Finland, and both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland are all ranked lower.
This is not, I might add, so much an argument as a reflection. Football isn’t like rugby or cricket. It’s an over-subscribed field. And one in which it is difficult to prosper. As far as rugby and cricket at the Paris Olympics was concerned, it was a bronze medal in the Sevens for South Africa. The gold medal was taken by France, the hosts, strengthened by the presence of the mesmeric Antoine Dupont.
Cricket will have its chance in Los Angles in 2028. The American organisers already have a logo – and a name. Masters of the abbreviation, they’ve gone in for calling the upcoming Games LA28.
What we remember of the Paris Olympics depends very much on us. One of my best memories was of Ethan Katzberg, the unaffected 22-year-old Canadian hammer-thrower from Nanaimo [Nan-ai-mo], which is on the eastern seaboard of Vancouver Island on British Colombia.
I can’t pretend to be technically knowledgeable about the hammer-throw, but Katzberg’s rotation and wind-up is a sequence of force and beauty. As such a young man you rather feel he’ll be part of the sport for many Olympics to come.
Katzberg wasn’t the only field athlete to capture the world’s imagination. Mondo Duplantis, the Swedish pole vaulter, can’t have been known to many outside of the athletics cognoscenti, but by the time the Olympics were over he was a darling to millions.
Duplantis vaulted higher than his two closest rivals, Sam Kendricks of the USA, and Emmanouil Karalis, the son of a Greek father and a Ugandan mother, and did so with a kind of haughty, celestial ease. Not content to float higher than the next two best pole vaulters in the world, he later proceeded to break the world record for good measure. It was the kind of night in Paris when Duplantis seemed immortal, while the rest of us stood rooted to our seats and fixed to our TVs.
And let’s not forget Noah Lyles, the wisp-like American sprinter who suffered from asthma as a child of divorced parents in the American South, and weighs the scales at 70 kilograms. Many of us will remember Lyles’ entrance into the arena at the Olympics, a kind of pumped-up, balls-of-his-feet adrenaline surge. We looked again, not entirely sympathetically, and there he was, jumping to the start like he was riding a pogo stick.
Minutes later Lyles, by no means the favourite for a medal, had won himself gold with a scalding run. Sprinting had a new darling, with the mandatory pinch of 100m bombast thrown in for good measure.
Fourth in the men’s 100m final was South Africa’s Akani Simbine, mere fractions of seconds behind third-placed Fred Kerley and second-placed Kishane Thompson. With his fourth, Simbine appeared to have enhanced his reputation as athletics’ nowhere man, a stellar athlete who, through the fates, couldn’t quite do enough to grab himself a medal.
Until the men’s four by one hundred relay wound round, that is. Here Simbine and colleagues, Bayanda Walaza (18), Shaun Maswanganyi, and Bradley Nkoana (19) were hardly noticed, the pre-race sentiment bemoaning the Jamaican’s absence and rather fancying the unfancied Chinese.
Truth to tell, it was the Canadians – who had a wonderful Olympics – who won gold, as Simbine ran a sharp final leg to win South Africa silver. He was a desperately happy man afterwards. And deservedly so. All of South Africa was happy for him. It looked as though he might be fourth forever. Now he was in second. It was a medal to treasure.
Elsewhere in the athletics world, and things weren’t quite as edifying. In October, Kenyan athlete, Ruth Chipengetich, won the Chicago Marathon in a world-record time. Chipengetich’s time had the athletics inner sanctum all a-flutter, with a hard core suspicious of the record, the first-ever sub-two-hour ten-minute women’s marathon.
On the one hand, many said it was the perfect race on a perfect day for racing, on a track that is notoriously fast for athletes and that Chipengetich knew well, having won the Chicago Marathon twice before.
On the other, some said that the Kenyan shaved nearly two minutes off the previous best time, an unheard-of advance. Kenya, they added, has a well-documented culture of doping, and this record was simply too good to be believed.
This week, World Athletics ratified Chipengetich’s record, so you might say that all the hue and cry is irrelevant – the world’s ultimate sanctioning body have given their decision.
There is a problem here. And by addressing the problem we can paint a picture. The picture is that Bank of America sponsor the Chicago Marathon. They, and other high-profile sponsors, don’t want their sponsorship to be besmirched by false claims or skulduggery, and their lobbyists have quietly seen to this.
The sport internationally is rife with doping, it is widely documented. When the 30-year-old Chipengetich smashed the world record in Chicago, 106 Kenyan athletes had been suspended by the Athletics Integrity Unit, the international body entrusted with policing the sport. This, doubtless, is but a glimpse of deeper rot.
This, though, is retroactive tinkering. The spectacle, and the machine of commercial and administrative interests around it, cannot be threatened while major international events are actually taking place. That is too dangerous for those very interests, so the next best thing is turned to, which is a kind of retrospective mollification, designed to prove to the skeptical that something is being done and the sport is in good, trustworthy hands.
The analogy is imprecise, but it’s a little like washing your hands after you’ve spilled blood. Catching a small proportion of dopers, often from poor countries whose authorities cannot afford legal representation, is simple to understand – a cynical salve to ease the collective athletics conscience.
But, finally, let’s return to two, the number with which we started this final podcast of 2024. Two is the number of Tests the Springboks lost all year, the first – already discussed – to Ireland by a point in Durban, and the second, also by a point, away to Argentina in the Rugby Championship. Two Tests by a point each. That’s compelling stuff.
As the former Welsh fly-half, Dan Biggar, pointed out in a recent podcast, this is a very different Springbok beast to the green bulldozer of six and seven years ago. It hasn’t sacrificed traditional forward strengths, but to this Rassie Erasmus and, before him, Jacques Nienaber, have added flair and invention.
Scrums after marks, wings throwing into line-outs, false scrum-halves, fun and games off your own throw on attacking line-outs in which the thrust of a maul is shifted, two flyhalves ready to receive the ball if there’s a wrestle on the ground in the attacking half.
This team is powerful. But they’re also quick and creative, obsessed with manipulating the field so they create a mis-match from which they can benefit. Rugby has seldom been as inventive, or brutal, or competitive. In Tony Brown, the Boks have also added a backline coach of unusual creativity.
Detractors have bemoaned the use of the Bomb Squad. They’ve complained about the Boks’ relentlessness and their willingness to push the legal envelope. With respect, this is tosh.
All the great sides – think the All Blacks under Richie McCaw – have skirted close to the laws and the line. In actual fact, the Boks are generally good at the disciplinary side of the game. One of the reasons why they nearly didn’t make it out of last year’s World Cup semi-final is that they were poor in this aspect of the England match. You don’t give Owen Farrell a second sniff is the moral of that story.
The ‘Boks used a whopping 51 players in 2024, surely some kind of record, so the succession planning is well and truly entrenched. And this is the time to do it – when the side is winning. You can’t do it at any other time, because tinkering in those situations only leads to further losing, and unhappiness. That threatens to ruin the entire project. After a while the experiment stops in the naming of winning, and the succession momentum stalls. Suddenly you’re back to square one.
If there is a concern about the ‘Boks it is about the age of their players. The forwards are old, the backs less so. The succession planning has momentum, true, but are their enough battle-hardened players in the wings. Perhaps. Perhaps not. It’s going to be a very interesting few years until the 2027 Rugby World Cup, as Argentina and Australia begin their march and the Blackness come again.