On August 29th, over a packed DHL Stadium in Cape Town, two South African Airlink passenger jets executed a classic South African pre-game flyover, right before kick-off. As we know they came dangerously close to the stadium roof. It was an event that co-incidentally occurred 25 years after the September 11 attacks in New York. Low flying aircraft in densely populated areas is a story we have heard before, and we have the neural pathways and trauma responses that testify to it.
Rugby Rivalry, 9/11 Trauma, and Emotional Intelligence (EQ)
The DHL stadium flyover caused a flurry of opinions online.
For context: the week before (before Test 1, at Ellis Park) the scene was quite different. It was sensory overload.
Game two required South Africa to offer a better ‘cake’ to our guests than we did the week before. An Emirates A380 flew over the stadium, but the timing went wrong with all the other pre-game theatrics all being thrown together at the same time. And the ‘chaos’ that resulted caused some relational damage between the stakeholders. Everything happened at the same time. Pyrotechnics exploded, the plane flew overhead, and stadium music blared all while the All Blacks launched into the haka.
To the Kiwis, drowning out this sacred challenge was experienced as deep disrespect.
It is important to note that a haka is not “the haka.” There are different versions (stories, if you will) and the choice of which haka is performed tells its own story.
The specific version of the haka that the All Blacks performed during that Test match, and the one they usually use in games against the Springboks, is called Kapa O Pango – it was choreographed specifically for the All Blacks team, but they don’t just bring it out for anyone – it is reserved strictly for high-stakes games against their most respected rivals. While of course it is meant to intimidate, it is also a deeply respectful artefact offered to us out of respect for us as their greatest rivals, like the series name itself indicates. I absolutely love the way our current Springbok team has generally received it in recent years. Respectfully, in silence. It has not always been this way.
To drown out Kapa O Pango with a plane flyover, pyrotechnics and stadium music is poor form. The backlash was instant: social media erupted, and SA Rugby issued a public apology. It was a classic amygdala hijack – a chaotic incident but one that starkly contrasted with the redemptive, respectful response that followed in Cape Town a week later.
Flyover Controversy & Rugby: Testing EQ and Emotional Regulation
For the DHL game, the following week, organisers recalibrated every second of pre-match protocol to ensure complete silence during the haka. It was a clear opportunity to respond differently and restore cultural respect with rivals. To be respectful hosts. And the result was breathtaking. Everything in its place, each ingredient in the recipe for the pre-game ‘appetizer’ added and mixed in at just the right time. Resulting in a near-perfect pre-game schedule that set the scene for an amazing evening.
But even with the empathetic preparation, the ‘cake’ we served up in preparation for this second Test match unleashed a second social media storm. This time from the aviation community (and the peanut gallery of the rest of us). The planes flew within 12.5 – 14 m of the stadium roof. This sparked intense global safety debates, highlighting how identical events evoke vastly different emotional responses depending on history. Context, perspective and national identity and memory.
People have opinions.
We live in an era that is being defined and consumed by polarisation, and it’s getting worse.
Modern political discourse and cultural engagement across the ‘aisles of difference’ are neurologically shaping us to view ‘difference’ and ‘Otherness’ as an existential threat. And because culture is contagious, just like emotion, the emotionally charged dialogue around our differences is getting worse and worse – spreading like a virus. Every opponent is an enemy, and every conflict gets positioned as a ‘zero-sum game’ where winning means total annihilation.
People have lost their minds.
To understand how we can fight without destroying each other, you don’t have to look at geopolitics. In fact, we probably shouldn’t look at politics of any kind. You just have to look at what happens when the Springboks and the All Blacks step onto the exact same plane a week later.
How Rugby Rivalries Use EQ and Proximity to Build Empathy
The third test in the series happened the week after the Cape Town game, in Soweto. No flyovers unfortunately (as a result of the previous week’s controversy) but lots of other newsworthy aspects. It was brutal. Broken jars, fractured bones, dislocated joints. But fresh off that battle on Saturday, both the Springboks and the All Blacks walked off the pitch, showered, and 24 hours later boarded one plane, together: a 15-hour charter flight to Baltimore.
Did you catch that nuance? One plane for all of them.
An aeroplane isn’t a rugby field.
On the field, competing teams battle over territory, operating from two opposing perspectives facing each other.
But sharing a plane requires a different posture. Not against, but together. Quite literally instead of head to head facing off across a middle line, they are all faced the same direction moving in the same direction, towards one shared end – the final game in Baltimore, where neither would have the home-ground advantage. A shared reality from the start.
Sitting across the aisle from each other they must downshift out of that amygdala-driven ‘fight’ state (tackle first, ask questions later) and step into highly rational prefrontal cortex function. They had to exercise impulse control and emotional self-regulation while sharing an armrest with their fierce rival.
What is it that enables that change? Respect, Emotional Intelligence, and the ability to see each other not as the “Other”, but as “our same kind”.
At 35,000 feet there are no separate cabins for winners and losers. There is no algorithm to filter out the giant front-rower who demolished your scrum last night – and who is now snoring in the back row, behind you.
This is where the neuroscience of emotional intelligence reveals itself.
The Neuroscience of Emotional Intelligence
Unrestrained rivalry wants to keep the amygdala on the field, running hot. It wants to hold onto anger, defensiveness, and territorial pride. But high EQ delivers impulse control and cognitive reframing so we can engage in healthy ways off the pitch. EQ enables maturity to suppress the primitive urge to pummel the person across the proverbial aisle.
In the air, mirror neurons take over. When Eben looks across at Tamaiti icing a swollen knee, or when Dave and Rassie share a quiet coffee near the galley, the brain registers something profound: “That man is not a monster. He is subjected to the exact same physical reality, fatigue, and vulnerability as I am. He also thinks these seats are too small!”
Proximity forces empathy. It’s harder to dehumanise the player when you can hear them breathing in the seat next to you. When you help the steward pass him his drink, (or take his empty cup for the rubbish bag as it’s passing while he’s asleep).
This has been modelled to us in so many ways by these two teams in recent years. From their post-match prayer meetings on the pitch, to the recent Instagram post with the two team captains attending the same church service together the week before. Ardie Savea’s caption to the social media post says it all: “Nothing better than being in the presence of the Lord with my brother in Christ”.
25 Years Since 9/11: Using EQ to Disagree Well in Rugby and Society
Our world does not have a track record of disagreeing well.
Last Friday was twenty-five years after 9/11. Thursday, the day prior, was one year since Charlie Kirk was assassinated.
Cultural moments like these invite us to build a higher road: leveraging Emotional Intelligence to maintain discipline, respect, and mutual understanding even when standing across from our fiercest competitors.
There is nothing wrong with competition. We should advocate assertively for what we believe. We should play hard on the rugby pitch, seek to outsmart our competition in free markets, if we can. Conflict is natural, a necessary engine of human progress. But the crucial, redemptive question for our time is not if we will fight – but how… The question that must define us today is what kind of humans will we choose to be while we do it?
We do not have to agree. We do not have to surrender our competitive edge or fire. But we can choose to meet in the middle, hold space for each other’s dignity, and master the rare, beautiful art of disagreeing well.
Written by Theran Knighton-Fitt, Chief Humanising Officer, Mygrow.