He ran alongside the Springbok bus as it dawdled its way through downtown Johannesburg, trying to catch the eye of the Captain, trying to make himself heard above the din.

He was a schoolboy, in his uniform, as if he had rushed here straight after the final bell. In his hand, close to his heart, he held a rugby ball.

“Siya!” He called, “Siya!” But he wasn’t the only one calling.

The Captain’s name had become a chant, rising above the screaming, the shouting, the whooping of sirens, the hooting of minibus taxis trying to find a gap in the traffic. Or maybe they, too, were trying to catch Siya’s eye.

Someone noticed the schoolboy, and perhaps out of concern — it was a big double-decker, and the crowd was surging — they smacked the side of the bus, and the shock of the reverb travelled all the way to the open rooftop. Siya saw.

He reached over and gestured for the ball, and the schoolboy stopped and threw. The ball soared, with a graceful twist, up, up, up, and it bounced off the metal just short of Siya’s outstretched hands.

The schoolboy caught the ball and he threw it again, harder and higher. Siya intercepted it, with the ease of someone who has spent a lifetime catching passes, and he scrawled on the ball and threw it back, with even greater ease.

The schoolboy’s eyes lit up, as if he had caught sight of a shooting star in the heavens. He held the ball aloft in triumph as the bus moved on, towards the Nelson Mandela Bridge.

It was just a fleeting moment, one of many on the homecoming tour of the four-time Rugby World Cup champions, but it echoed another moment, when another schoolboy had that same look in his eyes. You might have seen the photograph.

Siya Kolisi, on that day, was just 13, wearing the uniform of Grey High School in Port Elizabeth, his tie a little askew, as he stood and watched his hero, the blond-locked Springbok flanker, Schalk Burger, signing an autograph during a Test Week visit.

History plays it forward over the ages, and every hero can trace their inspiration to a hero of their own; in Schalk Burger’s case, the light was cast by his own father, also Schalk Burger, who played as Springbok lock during the years of isolation in the 1980s.

Perhaps that schoolboy in Johannesburg, with that rugby ball that now bears Siya’s name, will equally go on to greatness, and that moment on the great homecoming parade will be forever etched in his memory as the moment when it all began.

Because that's the point of it all, when the final whistle blows. It's not the points on the scoreboard that count. It's the idea, and the ideal, that we all need someone to look up to in life.

And some reason, whichever way the ball bounces, to pick it up and play it forward.