One metre seventy-one. Seventy-five kilograms. Those two numbers were used as an argument against Cheslin Kolbe for the first fifteen years of his rugby life, and they are still printed beside his name on every team sheet he has ever appeared on. Born on 28 October 1993 in Kraaifontein, on the Cape Flats side of Cape Town, he turns 33 today.
SCOTTSVILLE TAUGHT HIM TO RUN BEFORE IT TAUGHT HIM RUGBY
Kraaifontein in the 1990s was not a rugby nursery. It was a community where gang activity shaped where children were allowed to walk, and Kolbe has spoken openly about gunshots being part of the background noise while he played outside.
The footwork came from there. He has said for years that the step, the change of direction, the refusal to run into contact, were learned long before any coach drew them on a whiteboard.
He went to Hoërskool Brackenfell and came through Western Province age-group rugby from Grant Khomo Week in 2009 to the Under-21 Provincial Championship. Sprinting is in the family — Wayde van Niekerk, Olympic 400m champion and world record holder, is his cousin.
THE SIZE OF COURAGE, AND WHAT IT COST HIM EARLY
Cheslin Kolbe made 43 appearances for Western Province and 49 for the Stormers between 2012 and 2017, and won a Currie Cup in 2014. What he did not get in that period was consistent recognition that a player his size could survive Test rugby.
So he took the long route. Two seasons with the Blitzboks from 2015, roughly 30 tournaments and 113 points, and a bronze medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics. He has credited sevens with sharpening his defence, his decision-making and his conditioning more than any gym programme did.
“They spent years telling Cheslin he was too small for this game, and he answered them in World Cup finals!” – 🎙️Jay
Then he left. Toulouse signed him in 2017, and by the time he arrived at his Springbok debut against Australia in September 2018, he was a 24-year-old who had already been written off at home.
YOKOHAMA, THE LIONS AND THREE KNOCKOUTS DECIDED BY ONE POINT
On 2 November 2019 in Yokohama, with the Rugby World Cup final already moving away from England, Cheslin Kolbe collected the ball with 74 minutes gone, stepped inside Owen Farrell and scored the second Springbok try in a 32-12 win. It is the most replayed sidestep in South African rugby.
In 2021 he scored the only try of the third Test against the British & Irish Lions, the match that won the series.
Two years later came the sequence that defines him better than any highlight package. In the 2023 quarter-final against France at the Stade de France, Kolbe broke from under the posts and charged down Thomas Ramos’ conversion — a play World Rugby later confirmed was legal, and two points France never got back in a 29-28 defeat.
South Africa won all three of their knockout matches at that tournament by a single point. In the final itself he was yellow-carded late for a deliberate knock-down and had to watch the last minutes of a 12-11 win from the sideline, head in his hands.
NINE YEARS AWAY, AND THE DECISION TO COME HOME
The club career abroad was relentless. Toulouse brought 82 appearances, two Top 14 titles and the 2021 Champions Cup. Toulon followed, with the 2022-23 Challenge Cup. Then Tokyo Sungoliath from 2023, where he scored 321 points in 43 games and became the highest-paid player in Japan.
In May 2026 he signed for the Stormers, ending nearly a decade outside South African domestic rugby. He has said the decision was made for family reasons as much as rugby ones.
He has not played a minute for them yet. On 5 September 2026, in the Springboks’ 29-24 win over the All Blacks in Soweto, Cheslin Kolbe broke his jaw. Writing about it afterwards, he described running his tongue along his bottom teeth and finding a gap where the bone had given way.
The break sat close enough to the facial nerves to slow the repair. He has missed the Nations Championship tour entirely. Stormers director of rugby John Dobson has confirmed he is available from the start of December, with the 5 December derby against the Sharks in Durban the target — his first match on South African soil as a home player since 2017, at 53 Test caps.
THE BOOK WITH HIS FACE ON A BILLBOARD IN TIMES SQUARE
This month he published his memoir. Sidestepping the Odds, written with broadcaster David O’Sullivan and released by Pan Macmillan in October 2026, runs from the school fields of Kraaifontein to the grandest stages in world rugby. Pan Macmillan gave the opening section a title that doubles as a summary of the man: The Size of Courage.
Roc Nation Sports International put his face on a billboard in Times Square to launch it, with further displays near Cape Town International Airport and in Sea Point. He launched the book at Cavendish Square on 22 October, six days before his birthday, with his jaw still healing.
The Cheslin Kolbe Foundation, run with his wife Layla, does the quieter work — youth upliftment, education, mentorship and gang-violence awareness in Kraaifontein, Scottsville and Belhar, including a partnership with Bridges Retreat, which reaches thousands of Western Cape learners every year. He and Layla married in 2018 and have three children. He is open about his faith being the thing that holds the rest together.
He turns 33 with a World Cup defence in Australia eighteen months away, a jaw knitting back together, and a Stormers jersey waiting for him in Durban in December.
Happy 33rd Birthday, Cheslin. From all of us at Just Plain Sport — the kid from Scottsville who was always too small has spent a decade proving that the measurement everyone kept quoting was the wrong one. 🎂🏉
