South Africa has been playing Test rugby since 1891. In one hundred and thirty-five years, eleven men have worn the jersey a hundred times. Pieter-Steph du Toit became the eleventh at DHL Stadium on Saturday 29 August 2026, in a 33-26 win over the All Blacks that levelled Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry at 1-1.
Three of those eleven arrived in the last ten months.
The full roll, and how each man’s hundredth actually went:
Percy Montgomery — 16 August 2008, New Zealand at Newlands, lost 0-19
John Smit — 21 August 2010, New Zealand at FNB Stadium, lost 22-29
Victor Matfield — 28 August 2010, Australia at Loftus, won 44-31
Bryan Habana — 6 September 2014, Australia in Perth, lost 23-24
Jean de Villiers — 13 September 2014, New Zealand in Wellington, lost 10-14
Tendai Mtawarira — 2018, England in Bloemfontein, won 23-12
Eben Etzebeth — 2022, Wales in Cape Town, won 30-14
Willie le Roux — 2025, Italy in Gqeberha, won
Siya Kolisi — 8 November 2025, France in Paris, won 32-17
Damian de Allende — 22 August 2026, New Zealand at Ellis Park, lost 16-33
Pieter-Steph du Toit — 29 August 2026, New Zealand at DHL Stadium, won 33-26
Read the dates instead of the names and something strange falls out. Springbok centuries arrive in pairs.
Smit and Matfield, seven days apart in August 2010. Habana and De Villiers, seven days apart in September 2014. De Allende and Pieter-Steph du Toit, seven days apart in August 2026. Three times in the union’s history, two men have reached a hundred caps inside the same week, and it has now happened in three separate decades.
The 2010 pair ran this exact script. Smit drew New Zealand and lost. Matfield got the following week and won. Sixteen years later De Allende drew New Zealand and lost, and Pieter-Steph du Toit got the following week — except this time the second man was facing the All Blacks as well.
That mattered, because of the other pattern buried in the list. Five of the eleven lost on their day. Four of those five defeats came against New Zealand, the fifth against Australia. Every Springbok who reached a hundred caps with the All Blacks opposite him lost the match, four for four across eighteen years, until Saturday.
“Rassie took the armband off him so he could just play, and he broke a curse four legends couldn’t touch!” – 🎙️Jay
The armband is not a footnote. Pieter-Steph du Toit had captained at Ellis Park in his 99th while Siya Kolisi worked through a hamstring, and when the Cape Town side was announced on the Monday he was named captain again — for the milestone itself. Then Kolisi passed his fitness testing and it went straight back.
Rassie Erasmus, Springbok head coach:
“It is his 100th match, and in such a match you probably don’t want to have captaincy and a lot of other things around you, you really want to play well.”
So he ran out on his hundredth carrying a number seven and nothing else.
Where Pieter-Steph du Toit sits in the eleven:
Kolisi aside, every other name on the list is a fullback, a wing, a centre, a hooker, a prop or a lock. Pieter-Steph du Toit is only the second loose forward South Africa has taken to a hundred Tests, and he got there nine months after the first.
He is also the only Springbok centurion holding two World Rugby Player of the Year awards, won in 2019 and 2024. Worldwide, only Dan Carter, Richie McCaw and Beauden Barrett have won it more than once, and none of them are South African.
Saturday was, by his own standards, unremarkable. Jesse Kriel scored inside two minutes off a Kolisi carry, De Allende went over on 22 and Kolisi found the line himself on 38 for a 24-14 half-time lead. Cheslin Kolbe kicked 18 points without a miss off the tee. Ox Nche collected a milestone of his own, a 50th cap, and won a scrum penalty at his first engagement.
Cam Roigard and Damian McKenzie scored for New Zealand before the break, and Leroy Carter and Ardie Savea came again inside the closing quarter to make the last ten minutes uncomfortable. Malcolm Marx stole two breakdown turnovers when they were needed most.
Writing in the Sunday Times, Mark Keohane called Pieter-Steph du Toit’s night a performance of sustained intensity, and traced the gap from Ellis Park to a side that was more disciplined, more decisive and far more accurate inside the New Zealand 22.
RugbyPass rated him 7.5 and needed four words: absolutely everywhere as usual. He topped the tackle count with 14, carried six times, won a lineout, and spent much of the evening in Roigard’s pockets.
Speaking to reporters at the stadium afterwards, in comments carried by Rugby365, he went to the city before he went to the record.
Pieter-Steph du Toit, Springbok flanker:
“Growing up here in Cape Town and being able to play at Newlands back then and now at Green Point, it’s a huge honour.”
Family and friends were in the ground. He called that the part that made it extra special, then delivered the line that has travelled furthest since.
Pieter-Steph du Toit:
“You couldn’t have scripted anything better.”
What the men who played against him say
Sam Cane captained the All Blacks and lost a World Cup final to this Springbok side. Asked on The Aftermatch with Kirst & Beav to name the best opponent he faced, he went straight to the number seven who had spent eighty minutes in his way.
Sam Cane, former All Blacks captain:
“Pieter-Steph du Toit is just incredible, like how he’s been able to be so relentless. When he first started, I always remember it was like, is he a lock? Is he a flanker? He’s that sort of athlete. He’s a rare breed.”
England’s Ben Earl, running through the best players in the world by position on Hits Different with Danny Care, put him at six and did not hedge.
Ben Earl, England back-row:
“He’s freakish in everything he does. There’s no weakness in his game. He just seems to be everywhere as well. He’s the standard-bearer of match involvements for a back-row.”
His own coaching staff have been saying a version of the same thing for years. After the 2023 World Cup final, in which Pieter-Steph du Toit made 28 tackles and took Player of the Match, Jacques Nienaber tried to explain what he had just watched.
Jacques Nienaber, then Springbok head coach:
“He was phenomenal. Defence is my department and he was exceptional. I always joke that if there’s a white plastic bag that blows over the field, he would probably chase that down as well. The Malmesbury Missile, he was like a machine.”
The centurion his own coach nearly dropped
The most revealing thing said about him this week came from the man who almost never picked him.
In a piece filed by Foster Niumata for the Associated Press, Erasmus described what he saw on arriving in 2018 — a bench utility forward whose tackling was a problem and whose ball-carrying was worse.
Rassie Erasmus, to the Associated Press:
“I have never been as wrong about a player as I was with Pieter-Steph du Toit, and I have never been as pleased to be so wrong.”
What changed it was a 24-tackle shift in South Africa’s first win over New Zealand in nine years. His own account of how he operates, in the same piece, runs to two sentences.
Pieter-Steph du Toit, to the Associated Press:
“I’m a strong believer in actions speak louder than words. The way you perform on the field or the way you live your life must tell your story.”
He was born on 20 August 1992, which made him 34 years and nine days old on Saturday. Two metres, roughly 115 kilograms, raised on Kloovenburg, the family wine and olive farm in the Riebeek Valley outside Malmesbury. Hoërskool Swartland, not a rugby factory. His grandfather, Piet “Spiere” du Toit, was a Springbok prop with 14 caps between 1958 and 1962, and Pieter-Steph is the seventh generation to carry the name Pieter Stephanus du Toit. His first-born son is the eighth.
Speaking to The Citizen this week, Cobus Reinach described the version of him the squad sees.
Cobus Reinach, Springbok scrumhalf:
“He’s probably not the most vocal guy, but he leads in the way he plays.”
The body he took into his 100th Test has been rebuilt more than once. Two ruptured ACLs, the second reconstructed with a slice of his own father’s hamstring tendon — the pair of them left hospital in wheelchairs, and his dad still enjoys mentioning that he walked first.
Then 2020, when a thigh haematoma became acute compartment syndrome and amputation entered the conversation. Emergency surgery, a 40cm incision left open for two weeks, ten kilograms of muscle gone, a year out of the game. He came back and won a second World Cup.
Add the shoulder operations, the ankle surgeries and the cracked sternum. The standard has not moved once.
Eleven names in a hundred and thirty-five years. The newest belongs to a man his own coach nearly sent back to the bench, who reached the mark in the same seven-day window as the man before him, and who is the only one of the eleven to have beaten New Zealand on the day.
