Kings Park, Durban, 18 July 2026. Fifth minute. Cobus Wiese takes the ball into the heart of the Welsh midfield, gets his arms free in contact and pops a short offload to his right. His older brother Jasper Wiese does not break stride.
Five minutes into the first Test the two of them had ever started together for South Africa, the ball was down and the Boks were away. They won 43-0.
Happy Birthday to Jasper Wiese, born on 21 October 1995 in Upington in the Northern Cape, 31 today. That try in Durban took a year and one red card to arrive, and understanding why it mattered so much means going back a long way before it.
UPINGTON MADE HIM, BLOEMFONTEIN BUILT HIM
Upington is a Kalahari town on the Orange River, closer to the Namibian border than to any major rugby academy, and it is not where Springbok No 8s are supposed to come from. Wiese went to Hoërskool Upington and played his provincial schools rugby for Griquas Country Districts — the U16 Grant Khomo Week in 2011, where he started all three matches and scored tries, then Craven Week in both 2012 and 2013.
Craven Week is where the scouts gather and the contracts get handed out, and the Country Districts side is rarely the one they are watching. He was not signed by a major union out of school.
What he did instead was move to Bloemfontein, join the Free State Cheetahs academy and play his university rugby for the CUT Ixias between 2014 and 2016 while he worked his way up. He was invited to South Africa Under-20 trials ahead of the 2015 Junior World Championship and was left out of the training squad named the following week.
He spent the better part of six years in Free State colours, turning out for the Free State XV, the Griffons and the Free State Cheetahs before the Pro14 and Currie Cup sides became home. He has since been open about the fact that staying in Bloemfontein had quietly become a ceiling he had set for himself.
LEICESTER TURNED A CHEETAH INTO THE PREMIERSHIP’S BIGGEST CARRIER
In July 2020 he signed for Leicester Tigers and ran out against Gloucester four days after joining the squad. He was 24, almost unknown in England, and walking into a club that had just finished near the bottom of the Premiership.
Four seasons later he left Welford Road with 79 appearances and 21 tries, and a statistical record nobody in the league could touch. Oval Insights data released by the club showed that from the day he arrived, no Premiership player made more carries (896), more dominant carries (261), more post-contact metres (1,111) or beat more defenders (259) than he did.
The first final came up a point short. On 21 May 2021 at Twickenham, Leicester lost the European Challenge Cup decider 18-17 to Montpellier, with Wiese among the try-scorers.
The second one did not get away. On 18 June 2022, again at Twickenham, the Tigers beat Saracens 15-12 to win their first league title in nine years, and Wiese scored a try and took the man-of-the-match award. The following season his fellow professionals voted him the Rugby Players Association Players’ Player of the Year.
“He’s a Kalahari kid from Upington who nobody recruited out of Craven Week, and he ended up out-carrying every single player in the English Premiership. What a Saffa rugby story!” – 🎙️Jay
Rassie Erasmus called him into the Springbok squad for the 2021 British and Irish Lions series and he made his Test debut off the bench against Georgia at Loftus Versfeld on 2 July 2021. Two years later he was in Jacques Nienaber’s World Cup squad for France, and on 28 October 2023 at the Stade de France he came on in the 73rd minute for captain Siya Kolisi as South Africa beat the All Blacks 12-11 for a record fourth title.
TWO RED CARDS AND THE ONE THAT COST HIM HIS BROTHER
The thing that made him — the willingness to run straight at the biggest man in front of him — has also been the thing that cost him most.
In May 2024, in his final match for Leicester, he was sent off against Exeter Chiefs for lifting and driving Ross Vintcent into the ground head first at a ruck. The RFU handed him a six-match ban that took out his entire mid-year international window: Wales, both Ireland Tests, Portugal and two Tests in Australia. He came back only after a stretch of work with former international referee and Springbok assistant Jaco Peyper on his technique and discipline.
The second one hurt far more. On 12 July 2025 in Gqeberha, 21 minutes into the second Test against Italy, Wiese headbutted Italian loosehead Danilo Fischetti and was shown a straight red. The Boks still won 45-0 with 14 men. He accepted at his hearing that foul play had occurred but argued it did not warrant a red card. World Rugby disagreed and suspended him for four matches — Georgia, both Australia Tests and the first All Blacks Test in Auckland.
Cobus Wiese made his Springbok debut off the bench in the second half of that same match. The brothers became the 37th pair of siblings to represent South Africa, and because of the red card they never shared the field. Cobus, who had waited seven years for that cap after a broken neck and a false start at the Stormers, had to do it without his brother alongside him.
Wiese had already lost three months of that year to a neck injury picked up in March playing for Urayasu D-Rocks, the Johan Ackermann-coached Japan Rugby League One club he joined from Leicester in 2024. It involved two discs and required surgery back in South Africa.
A RECORD LOOSE TRIO, A 50TH CAP, AND A FAMILY THAT KEEPS GROWING
Which is what made the Durban try in July 2026 worth more than five points. Jasper finished that Test with 10 carries for 61 metres and nine tackles; Cobus was every bit as influential, and the two were pictured embracing on the touchline after both were substituted.
Six weeks later, on 5 September 2026 at FNB Stadium in Soweto, Wiese started alongside Kolisi and Pieter-Steph du Toit for the 18th time, giving South Africa its most-used loose trio in history and moving the combination past Francois Louw, Willem Alberts and Duane Vermeulen on 17. Wiese said afterwards that he only found out about the record once the game was over, and that what made it mean something was that the three of them are genuine friends.
On 27 September in Perth he brought up his 50th Test cap off the bench in a 42-38 defeat to Australia, and immediately pointed the squad towards the November leg of the Nations Championship in Europe. He has four Test tries to his name.
Springbok forwards coach Deon Davids
“Jasper, for me, epitomises what the Springboks are about.”
Davids has been in the coaching group since the Georgia debut in 2021 and now talks about him as one of the senior leaders in the pack rather than simply its heaviest carrier. Off the field, he and his wife Anja have a daughter, Emiah, born in July 2023, with a second child due in March 2027.
From all of us at Just Plain Sport — may the carries keep coming, and may you and Cobus get many more days in the same green jersey.
