DEAR Editor,-
Did anyone enjoy the UK sport last Sunday as much as I did? An eventful F1 race, won by an English driver who grew up poor on a council estate, yet with family support and career mentors.
Wimbledon was won by an extraordinary Serbian against a Swiss who, though poetic in his game, is older and still able to play the longest final in Wimbledon’s history – against a winner who also grew up poor in a council estate.
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And then there is the cricket. An awesome world cup final won by England (after much drama) against New Zealand.
So the question is – why is SA not a winner in the international sport arena? Including football and rugby.
We do reasonably well in individual sports, though we have no F1 champions. We do have a potential superbike champion, but time will tell.
But these are not team sports. My contention is that it is all down to coaching, which I believe is dysfunctional at grass roots level and up to international level.
What do talented individual SA sports stars do? They go to the US or Europe for mentored coaching.
On the other hand, team sports people generally remain in SA, unless they are exceptional and poached at an early age.
Can anyone remember any football star post Bruce Grobler who has had this opportunity?
Yes, many of our rugby players are playing overseas and rumour has it that over 100 South Africans played for other countries during the previous World Cup.
Although not empirically verifiable, but even reducing this by 50 percent, there’s obviously a problem.
So why? Coaching. New Zealand, admittedly a rugby-mad country, is without a doubt the best rugby playing country of the past two decades and their cricket is not bad either.
Why? They have a sporting culture and Maoris. We have a sporting culture and Indians, African tribes, the coloured community and Dutch/French/German/British ancestors to draw from for football, hockey, cricket and rugby, etcetera.
And yet our coaching culture is to all extent and purposes non-existent. When I played first team for one of the best schools in the country (a long time ago), seven of the first 15 were poached from other schools – a system I believe still exists today because it’s easier to poach than nurture talent.
We do not have a robust coaching culture. Yes, front line coaches in many sports are considered to be, if not top of the line, adequate. They will never coach Juventus or Liverpool, Crusaders or Harlequins.
However, second and third level coaches are reasonable at best. Rugby and cricket teams, our premier sports, have four or five coaches at top level for each team and a dearth of expertise.
It cannot be that as South Africans don’t understand sports. We have the best referees in the rugby world.
It cannot be that we don’t love sport. I find SA sports supporters amongst the most knowledgeable and fervent in the international community.
But we do not encourage competent, expert coaching. These days most schools consider the coaching position as a low paid necessary evil.
Smaller clubs have no budget and top clubs employ coaches more through a nepotism type process than one based on expertise.
Unless we entertain the European and/or NZ culture that coaching is as important, if not more important than talent acquisition and retention, we will remain a third world sporting nation.
TRUK REPOOC
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