The Speech that Moved GSPORT21: Monya Greyvenstein in Her Own Words
Before she thanked a single colleague, sponsor or friend on the biggest night of her professional life, Monya Greyvenstein asked the room to hear her in isiXhosa. The founder of She Moves Rugby was named Woman in PR and Sponsorship at the 21st gsport Awards at the Wanderers Club in Illovo, Johannesburg on Saturday, 8 August 2026, and became the first winner of the night to take the mic, hands shaking, speech on her phone.
“Ndibulela kuThixo kuqala. Ndiyakholelwa ukuba uThixo uyibekile le nto entliziyweni yam, kwaye ndenza umsebenzi wakhe.”
2026 Woman in PR and Sponsorship Award winner, Monya Greyvenstein
“I thank God first,” she began. “I believe that God placed this in my heart, and I am doing His work.”
The language was no flourish. Greyvenstein grew up in the rural Eastern Cape, practically raised, she says, by Xhosa women, and the words were spoken in their honour. That grounding travels with her into every boardroom and team room she enters on behalf of the women she serves.
The award recognises her work elevating South African women’s rugby through PR, sponsorship and advocacy, and the all-female agency she leads, which represents Springbok Women players including Ayanda Malinga, Jakkie Cilliers, Catha Jacobs and Maceala Samboya.
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For Greyvenstein, rugby has always carried something bigger than the scoreboard. She calls it a massive comeback story that represents hope, and she saw it up close when her Oom, a farmer from a community that never used to watch the women’s game, started asking after Aseza Hele, his favourite Springbok Women star during the World Cup.
“You end up standing up from the couch, even if you don’t like to see women play rugby.”
Her own road to that stage was anything but smooth. In Potchefstroom she built an entrepreneurial life, running a gym and a gin bar, before a difficult season saw both businesses close, leaving her to start over.
Rather than rebuild what was lost, she asked herself what she had always wanted to become, and the answer was a rugby agent. She wrote the accreditation exam and jumped the gap.
The welcome was brutal. Feedback on multiple exam applications dried up while sittings came and went, and days after she finally wrote and passed, a complaint landed her a disciplinary hearing she was not permitted to attend. The verdict eventually cleared her, offering only a slap on the wrist for a wrong she had not committed.
She admits she contemplated walking away from the thing she loved most. Instead, the isolation of that season showed her what women in the game carry every day, and gave her the name of the agency she would build, a daily creed for anyone who feels stuck.
“Just every day doing something to keep moving will eventually build enough momentum to cause a lot of movement.”
She Moves Rugby was born so that no woman player would face that industry alone. The proof of the posture came with Cilliers’ landmark move to Toulon in July 2026, a deal Greyvenstein closed across a language barrier with a French giant wary of agents, by refusing the very thing agents are assumed to chase.
“What I want is for you to trust me, to build a relationship with me and to actually introduce me to your network,” she told the club, declining commission on the deal. Toulon responded by offering to pay the agent’s commission on Cilliers’ behalf.
That is the spirit she takes into boardrooms, where her argument is that women’s rugby is not underfunded but underestimated. She has watched product deals turn into real money the moment a male Springbok entered the conversation, and she points brands to Adidas, whose incentive framework rewards all athletes in the same currency, as the standard the market has already proven.
She fights hardest for the forwards whose physiques carry the team but are told they do not ‘fit the brand’, insisting that authenticity is the asset. A rugby player who looks like a rugby player, she argues, sells more truth than any painted picture, and her real followers buy what she represents.
The 2025 Rugby World Cup opened doors, and Greyvenstein is honest about how many conversations with global brands started. But the hype died down after the final whistle, and the postulated the long-term investments never came. That gap is precisely where her work now lives, pursuing the contacts the tournament surfaced, until they sign.
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“We cannot think that progress is equality,” she says, returning to the line at the heart of her acceptance speech.
Progress, for her, has a plain definition. Development is a word South Africa cannot use while a Bok Women player trains after a day job, carries a household as breadwinner and pays for her own recovery, and Greyvenstein does not believe the game will be properly developed until women are paid to focus on rugby alone.
Asked what she would change, the answer came without pause: Get girls’ rugby into schools and clubs, because boys learn the game from under nine, while girls first pass a ball at 21, and no coaching structure can close that gap at Test level.
It is a commission she hands to everyone within reach, and one she clearly considers hers first. The purpose placed in her heart on the road from the Eastern Cape to the Wanderers stage is still being worked out, one deal, one player and one moving day at a time.
Main Photo Caption: gsport Woman in PR and Sponsorship winner Monya Greyvenstein at the 21st gsport Awards at the Wanderers Club in Illovo, Johannesburg on Saturday, 8 August 2026. Photo: Sachin du Plooy-Naran Photographer / gsport
Photo 2 Caption: Greyvenstein leads She Moves Rugby, championing sustainable careers for Springbok Women players. Photo: Paul Mukwevho / gsport
Photo 3 Caption: Greyvenstein challenges brands to see that women’s rugby is not underfunded but underestimated. P Photo: Sachin du Plooy-Naran Photographer / gsport
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