Elma Smit

Her journey began on ‘X-Factor for rugby presenters’. She soon became the first female face of the sport on South African television. She's gone on to cover three world cups and now hosts one of the biggest podcasts in the women’s game. This is Elma Smit’s rugby life.

There’s a South African schools’ game that attracts 50,000 people. It’s played between Paarl Boys High and Paarl Gymnasium, which was my school. Rugby was literally the way we socialised. I remember the score between the two teams in my final years, we won 13-3.

I grew up in an environment where rugby was part and parcel of your education. Paarl is a small town in the winelands, just outside of Cape Town. I went to the same school as Schalk Burger and John De Villiers and more recent Springboks that went there would be Andre Pollard, Wilco Louw. But it never occurred to me at that age that women could also play the sport.

I was involved with all things at school, but I was never an exceptional athlete. Girls played netball and hockey, but I was very bad. I was the girl who did the debates or hosted exchange students, organised the functions and wrote for the school newspaper.

I was always a broadcaster. I started working at the little radio station in my hometown, which was called ‘Radio KC 108.8 FM – the sound that sets you free’. Then I went on to study law at Stellenbosch, another big place for rugby - Schalk had a cricket bursary there before he started playing professionally.

My first language is Afrikaans, I couldn’t speak English until I was nineteen. So, I hosted my radio show in Afrikaans, got my entire degree in Afrikaans. Then I landed a music TV show for a local version of MTV where I interviewed South African bands and hosted a festival called Kopi, which is like the South African version of Glastonbury.

Before the Rugby World Cup in 2011 no women had ever reported on rugby in South Africa. We did have a women’s team but at that stage they were completely amateur, so they couldn’t do what they usually do with men’s rugby, where Victor Matfield retires, becomes a pundit, the analysts can ask him for his expert opinion. Because no one knew who the women’s players were, they were never reported on, or seen or TV.

SuperSport did a talent search for a female anchor – it was like X-Factor for rugby presenters, the show was called Lady Rugger. We were filming in the same studio complex as SuperSport, and I was in the canteen one day chatting to one of the producers, and they asked if I would come audition. I think they had realised because the show was due to finish in July and the winner needed to be in New Zealand by September, they needed people with experience in the mix.

In the audition I had to pretend a swarm of bees had attacked the pitch and do a live telling them what I could see. I went on to win but then there was this big media storm because a lot of people were saying it was ridiculous, and, ‘why can’t they just hire a woman that is good at this?’ But it was great entertainment, it became the talk of the town. I got a sponsored car, then went to New Zealand and covered the tournament.

When I came back, I ended up being touchscreen girl by default. The producers didn’t know what to do with me as they had these very senior men hosting all these shows and there I was, this 26-year-old girl with World Cup experience.

I came to England in 2015 to cover the World Cup and I saw all these very prominent women working as rugby reporters. It felt like the future. That tournament was mind blowing for me in so many ways. This whole world of women participating in the conversation was very real. I went on to do Japan in 2019 and by then I had started to work directly for international governing bodies and clients all over the place, not just SuperSport. That was a career highlight for me, being in Japan. We delivered so much content, the pace was unreal.

In 2019, I did the Cricket World Cup and Rugby World Cup in the same year. It was an interesting comparative experience because from an operational perspective, the two couldn’t be more different. I worked for the ICC from May until July and then for World Rugby from September until November. The next year, I hosted a figure skating show which was interesting because I didn’t get to stray beyond ball sports often. It is a phenomenally brave and technical sport that has this beautiful artistic side to it.

One of my funniest moments ended up as a viral video. I was doing fan interviews at a Super Rugby doubleheader in January 2020, the Stormers were playing the Bulls. I went to a Stormers fan to ask what he thought was going to happen, thinking he’s going to tell me a story how they’re going to win. He just went, ‘we’re going to f*ck them up!’ I turned to the camera with this joking look on my face and said, ‘Okay, back to the studio’. I didn’t think the footage was going anywhere, but literally seconds later my phone started blowing up with messages saying, ‘Oh my god, how funny is that? I can’t believe that just happened live!

During lockdown, I started doing podcasts from home. I basically had video calls like this with Jake White and Werner Kok. Then I did the World 10s series in Bermuda with Alex Payne. Shortly after that, he reached out and said, ‘we think we have a format that would work and would be sponsored, we’ve got Emily Scarratt keen – would you want to be the host of this?’.

The opportunity to work with Scaz and Mike Tindall was absolutely nuts, I couldn’t believe my luck. We did our first episode, and it went out on International Women’s Day in 2021. At this stage, we were thinking about moving to the UK already, and that became a case of when, not if. It was a fun, simple way for me to start making more UK focussed content, even while I was still living in South Africa.

The most interesting person I’ve interviewed has to be Siya Kolisi. I’ve spoken with him a few times over the years, and he has an innate humility and authenticity. He gets through to people’s hearts so effortlessly. It’s something I marvel at, I’m genuinely fascinated with how he does it. When we look back on his journey in fifty years, him being a world class rugby player is going to be the least remarkable thing about him.

I’ve also worked closely with Rassie [Erasmus] over the years, he’s not a difficult interview. He knows exactly what he wants to say when he’s in front of a microphone, he’s an astute strategist. Obviously, it’s the job of the interviewer to get great content out of someone. His character can either make that relatively easy, or twice as hard.

I’m busy making rugby content on a day-to-day basis. I get to make a brilliantly fun podcast with Scaz and Mo – I’m living the dream.