When Siya Kolisi lifted the Webb Ellis trophy a year ago in Japan, Nolusindiso Booi was among those celebrating the country’s third Rugby World Cup success.
Also known as Cindy Booi, the 35-year-old – who remembers being transfixed throughout the final – is captain of the Springboks Women.
“It was a great moment for everyone in South Africa,” she told Sportshour on the BBC World Service. “We were very happy because it was something huge.”
There was also real hope that the men’s triumph would help create a women’s professional league in South Africa, where the women’s game is still amateur.
But twelve months on, progress has been slow.
“We’re getting better day by day, but hopefully it’s something that will happen,” she patiently says. “We still need to have sponsors since we are still amateur. We’re still developing.”
Despite women’s rugby still working towards becoming professional, Booi – an ambassador for a new project from World Rugby called ‘Unstoppables’, which wants to raise the profile of the women’s game – says it is already a different world to when she started out.
“I was skinny and tall when I was asked if I wanted to play rugby,” says Booi, a lock who has played at two Women’s World Cups.
“My facial expression was – “really?” – because it was something I didn’t know. In my village we didn’t have rugby – it was only cricket that was there. So it was something I didn’t think I would play in my life and didn’t know anything about.
“But after that, I made the provisional team and that’s what made me want to play more. I was enjoying that process of travelling and going from province to province, because I grew up in the Eastern Cape and that was the only province I knew at that time.”