Pienaar, Francois (1967-…), a South African Rugby Union player, became one of the most popular players in the history of the sport. He was an inspirational captain and led South Africa to their home victory in the 1995 Rugby Union World Cup. Pienaar, who played a position called blindside flanker, built a reputation as a committed and hard-working player who leads by example. From the outset of the 1995 World Cup, he showed himself to be a talented ambassador, uniting South Africa behind its team. He said after the final, “We didn’t have 63,000 fans behind us today, we had 43 million South Africans.”
Francois Pienaar was born on Jan. 25, 1967, in Vereeniging, in what is now the province of Gauteng, South Africa. He attended Patriot School in Cape Town and then studied law at Rand Afrikaans University (now part of the University of Johannesburg). He showed early promise as a rugby player, being capped for the South African Schools team in 1985 and playing for the South African Under-20 team in 1987. He played for the South African Barbarians in 1990 and became captain of both the Transvaal team and the national South African team in 1993. In 1996, Pienaar left South Africa and the national team and began playing for the Saracens Rugby Club in England, with his first game in January 1997. He served as player-coach for the Saracens from 1998 to 2000, when he retired as a player. He continued as coach until 2002. Pienaar’s autobiography, Rainbow Warrior, was published in 1999.
