Steven Kitshoff: Rugby’s quiet game‑changer

There is nothing like running into a stadium filled with 80 000 spectators. It’s humbling. It’s adrenaline gushing, it’s just a feeling that makes you want to win. Former Springbok prop and Bomb Squad original member Steven Kitshoff is not what you’d expect from a world champion. He’s soft-spoken, chilled and does not don a veneer beyond who he is – and that he wears on his sleeve. “We never just did it for us,” he said. “Every match, like Rassie [Erasmus] always shared with the team too, was for the guy in the taxi, the family struggling to put food on the table and the fans who pay for tickets to watch them play. It’s always been about South Africa.” Kitshoff was there during the good and the bad It’s a belief and a thread that runs through the team and has done so since the Springboks picked themselves up from the dark days a decade ago. Kitshoff was there for both ends of one of the greatest comeback stories in South African sport. Rugby player Steven Kitshoff poses for a photograph, 22 September 2026, in Hyde Park, Johannesburg. Kitshoff was speaking to The Citizen about his new book. Picture: Michel Bega/The Citizen He remembers 2016 and 2017, as “one of the darkest moments in Springbok rugby”. There was little money in the system, performances were poor and confidence in the team had taken a hammering. Then Erasmus arrived and the turnaround was not an overnight miracle. He said it started with small things. “It was guys doing a little bit of extra work when it comes to training and habits,” he said. Players took greater care of their conditioning. They became fitter, plans became clearer and smaller goals started being ticked off. Confidence followed and, by the time the Boks arrived at the 2019 Rugby World Cup, something had changed. “The guys believed in the system. Really believed in each other. The players trusted the coaching staff and vice versa,” Kitshoff said. It also created the environment in which one of South African rugby’s most famous innovations was born. The Bomb Squad The Bomb Squad changed the way the Springboks thought about the eight players sitting on the bench. Traditionally, there was a starting 15 and replacements came on when someone was injured, tired or needed to be changed. Erasmus turned that thinking on its head. There would be a starting team and then another group of fresh players arriving with a job of their own. “Change the rhythm of the game, bring momentum, stop momentum. Whatever the job was at hand, that was our role as a group of eight players,” Kitshoff said. The Bomb Squad was born. The name stuck and Kitshoff became one of its original members. It has also followed him into retirement and business, including the Bomb Squad beer brand he is involved in, but rugby is no longer the centre of his life. His memoir, Kitsie, penned with Michael Vlismas, marks that change and tells his story in reverse. Rugby player Steven Kitshoff poses for a photograph, 22 September 2026, in Hyde Park, Johannesburg. Kitshoff was speaking to The Citizen about his new book. Picture: Michel Bega/The Citizen Kitshoff never planned to write a book. He was approached about telling his story. It’s not just a book with wins and ra-ras. “I was always trying to think of how I can leave something behind for someone else if it’s a lesson I’ve learned from rugby, or a mistake I’ve made, or where I’ve created a failure into success,” he said. ‘The book gave me closure’ Kitshoff is a two-time Rugby World Cup-winning prop who helped South Africa claim back-to-back titles in 2019 (Japan) and 2023 (France). Achieving sport’s greatest rung is no small feat and he lights up every time he speaks about it. Not just about rugby, but about life, the universe and everything. The process of collating material took him down memory lane. It meant spending hours revisiting different periods of his life, from schoolboy rugby through his professional career and eventually the difficult business of figuring out what happens when professional sport ends. “The book gave me closure; gave me opportunities to talk about the things I never talked about,” he said. “It brought back a lot of great memories and a lot of less joyful memories.” Retirement, however, has not left Kitshoff sitting around. He’s a regular on SuperSport, does corporate talks and has moved into podcasting with interests in several businesses. “I don’t miss the physical rugby game,” he said. “I don’t miss a sore body on a Sunday.” What he does miss is the dressing room and being part of a group working towards the same objective. “The game was just the cherry on the cake,” he said. “You were always in this team environment. You were always working towards a goal as a group.”