As a young woman growing up in Mamelodi, Lerato Makua associated Cape Town with holidays and days of leisure, and yes, a pretty decent mountain as well. But come Friday, under the shadow of that very same mountain, the 22-year-old Springbok Women’s Sevens player will be earning her very first Rugby World Cup Sevens cap and starting a journey that, she hopes, will bring her many tackles and opportunities to run into spaces.
“I love playing sevens, there is a lot of space on the field, and you can really make big tackles,” laughed the Blue Bulls lock, who has already earned five test caps for the Springbok Women, and is likely to earn another Rugby World Cup cap with that team next month in New Zealand.
It was indeed in the fifteens code where the Gauteng youngster first caught the eye, playing for the Blue Bulls in their Youth Training Centre teams. Her aptitude for hard work on the field soon resulted in a provincial call-up to the Blue Bulls Women, playing in the SA Rugby Women’s Premier Division.
Her performances earned her promotion to Springbok coach Stanley Raubenheimer’s squad in 2021. She made her test debut against Wales in November. The fact that Makua, who was named as loose forward back-up for that Cardiff clash, was called to the wing for her first taste of test match rugby, indicated her athletic ability and speed.
When Springbok Women’s Sevens coach, Paul Delport, named his wider squad at the beginning of the year, Makua was amongst those who started the road to the Rugby World Cup Sevens in Cape Town. She made her sevens debut at the HSBC France Sevens in Toulouse in May, having travelled with the squad that won the Rugby Africa Women’s Sevens in Tunisia a month earlier.
“When we played in Toulouse, I realised that the Rugby World Cup in Cape Town was a possibility. I thought I did ok, but then we were playing fifteens again and had test matches against Japan and Spain, so for a while I was not thinking about sevens. Once we completed the last test match in Spain and we joined the camp in Stellenbosch, I started to realise that the World Cup Sevens dream was alive again,” Makua said on Tuesday after the squad completed the second of their training sessions for the day.
“There is much to learn in sevens, and we are lucky in our group to have some senior players around. A couple of them played at the previous Rugby World Cup Sevens in 2018, so they have been telling us a lot about the pressures we can expect.
“The best advice they gave us was to not give up. If you make a mistake, fix it, never let your head drop because you tried to do something, and it did not work. We have a plan for this tournament, and we will try our best to implement that. We trained well so far, and I think we will be ok come Friday, and we run out onto the field.”
Makua has not played at Cape Town Stadium before, an experience to which she is looking forward: “We have heard a lot about the energy you get from the local crowd and the good support we receive as South Africa. I cannot wait to experience that on Friday,” she said.
“I was in the team that played against the Barbarians at Twickenham last year and we had a pretty big crowd there. That was awesome. Now we get that opportunity to do the same here. I want to enjoy that feeling. But in return I would like to show what we can do as a team as well. And if I can find open spaces and make a couple of good hits, so much better.”
The SA versus France match starts at 18h35 on Friday.
