LAURA WOLVAARDT 🇿🇦 ONE HUNDRED CAPS. ONE FOCUS. JUST CRICKET. 🏏 There is a version of Laura Wolvaardt that exists only on a cricket field. That is the only version the public has ever been given access to, and she has never once suggested that should change. One hundred T20Is into a career that began when she was sixteen years old, Wolvaardt arrives at the Pakistan match at Edgbaston having offered the world exactly what she signed up to provide: runs, leadership, and absolutely nothing else. In an era where athletes are brands, where personal lives are content and relationships are announcements, that is quietly remarkable. She has kept her private life completely her own. Not through controversy, not through careful management, but through a simple, unspoken commitment to being a cricketer first, last, and entirely. 👉🎙️ FULL STORY ON JUSTPLAINSPORT .COM #JustPlainSport #LauraWolvaardt #Cricket #SouthAfrica

🇿🇦 #URC - FINAL TEAMS 🇮🇪 Who are you backing? #LEIvBUL

🐗 AKKER VAN DER MERWE TURNS 35: THE WARTHOG NEVER STOPS CHARGING 🇿🇦🍺 Picture a ruck on the floor at Kings Park, two Springbok hookers jaw to jaw, red cards incoming, and the rugby world watching with a mixture of horror and guilty delight. That was March 2019. That single moment would end up costing Akker van der Merwe a seat on the most celebrated bus in South African rugby history. The 2019 World Cup squad left without him. Schalk Brits got on the plane to Japan. The Angry Warthog went to Manchester. What happened next is a story about character… Born in Vanderbijlpark on this very day, 17 June 1991, and turning 35 today, Armand Hendrik Petrus van der Merwe has never been a player who fits neatly into anyone’s plan. He charges... 👉🎙️ FULL STORY ON JUSTPLAINSPORT .COM #JustPlainSport #AkkerVanDerMerwe #happybirthday #bluebulls

🇿🇦 NORTON LEAPS FROM JUNIOR BOKS CAPTAIN TO STARTING FOR THE SPRINGBOKS🦌🏉 Siya Kolisi leads the Springboks against the Barbarians at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium in Gqeberha on Saturday, with kick-off at 15h00 SAST. The full matchday 23 is as follows: 1 Ox Nche 2 Andre-Hugo Venter 3 Carlu Sadie 4 … 🎙️ FULL STORY HERE: https://justplainsport.com/rugby/riley-norton-springboks-start-barbarians-gqeberha-2026/ #JustPlainSport #RileyNorton #Springboks

SIYA KOLISI TURNS 35 💪 THE LAST LINE OF DEFENCE 🇿🇦 Picture the young Siya Kolisi. He sleeps near the front door of his grandmother’s two-room house in Zwide township, Port Elizabeth, on a makeshift bed of sofa cushions wedged together so they don’t slide apart in the night. The year is somewhere in the late 1990s. There are already five people in the house. His favourite toy is a brick he pushes through the streets. His parents are teenagers who cannot keep him. His country is only just learning what it might mean to be free. Now picture Siya Kolisi the man. Standing in the middle of the Stade de France in Paris on the night of 28 October 2023, wearing the green and gold. Holding the Webb Ellis Trophy aloft for the second time. Surrounded by a team that has just beaten New Zealand by one point to become the first nation in history to win four Rugby World Cups. The whole of South Africa — load-shedding, unemployment, hope and all — watching... 🎙️ FULL STORY on JustPlainSport .com Happy 35th Birthday, Siya. From all of us at Just Plain Sport — you built your foundation in the hardest possible place, and you never once let it crack. 🎂🏉 #JustPlainSport #SiyaKolisi #HappyBirthday

JUSTIN GAETHJE SHOCKS THE WORLD AT THE WHITE HOUSE 🥊🇺🇸 He told himself he was going to lose. That’s not a fighter’s nerves talking. That’s not pre-fight psychology dressed up for a press conference. That was Justin Gaethje, 37 years old, carrying the interim UFC lightweight belt into the most theatrical arena in combat sports history, actively convincing himself failure was coming. “I told myself I was going to get embarrassed,” he would say afterward, “so I can go to my most primal place and dig deep.” What followed, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington D.C., in front of a sitting American president on his 80th birthday, against the most feared lightweight on the planet, was not embarrassment. It was one of the most extraordinary upsets in UFC history... 🎙️ FULL STORY on JustPlainSport .com #JustPlainSport #justingaethje #ufc

🏅GERDA STEYN MAKES COMRADES HISTORY WITH RECORD-BREAKING FIFTH TITLE 🏃‍♀️ The Smiling Assassin told herself to run it as if she’d never get the chance again. Then she went out and broke the record. Gerda Steyn crossed the finish line at Hollywoodbets Scottsville Racecourse in Pietermaritzburg on Sunday morning in a time of 5:44:53, claiming her fifth Comrades Marathon title and smashing her own up-run record in the process. It was the kind of performance that makes you reach for superlatives and find none quite big enough. 🎙️ FULL STORY on JustPlainSport .com #comradesmarathon #athlete #GerdaSteyn

🇿🇦 THE JUNIOR BOKS NAMED TO DEFEND THEIR CROWN IN GEORGIA 🏉 There is a peculiar kind of pressure that comes with defending a title. It is different from the pressure of trying to win one for the first time — quieter, more internal, built from the weight of what you already have rather than what you are still chasing. The Junior Springboks know that feeling now. They earned it in Rovigo last July, when they beat New Zealand 23-15 to end a 13-year wait for world junior supremacy. Now Georgia awaits, and SA U20 head coach Kevin Foote has named the squad tasked with doing it all again. What makes this particular group so compelling is not just what they are going to Georgia to defend. It is what several of them have already been asked to do before they even get there. 🎙️ FULL STORY on JustPlainSport .com #JustPlainSport #JuniorSpringboks #Rugby