Richard Boock: Punishing lesson from the good old days

COMMENT

Old habits die hard, particularly in South Africa.

The once isolated sporting nation might have returned from the wilderness 12 years ago, but it's still catching up in terms of science and management, if the national rugby and cricket teams are any guide.

First it was the cricketers, and many stubborn elements around, refusing to let go of the millstone that was Hansie Cronje, the disgraced and now late South African captain who was banned for life for match-fixing.

Cronje had been a cad, dragging his country and team-mates into the mire at precisely the time South African cricket was starting to flourish again, and should have been an automatic inductee for the national Sports Hall of Loathing.

Instead, team-mates painted him as something of a flawed genius.

If anything, his death in an air crash only increased the sense of compassion, until he was almost as large in death as he was in life.

Players were dedicating matches to his memory, speaking highly of his influence, and sounding almost wistful that he wasn't still at the helm, leading them into trumped-up battle.

The climate of denial eventually cost South Africa the World Cup, and Shaun Pollock the captaincy.

But if the danger of looking back rather than forward seemed clear enough for the rest of us, it was lost on the South African rugby team managers, who as part of the side's World Cup preparations organised what is now known as Kamp Staaldraad.

This was an apartheid-era military training camp, overseen by the coach's gun-toting bodyguard and henchmen, in which players were stripped naked, deprived of sleep and food, and ordered into an icy lake to pump up rugby balls.

It was a flashback to the days of the old South African boys network and the conscription camp tactics of humiliation, subjugation and conformity seen as the ideal preparation for war.

Unfortunately for the Springboks, it wasn't great preparation for the World Cup, where the tools to unlock opposition defences might have proved more useful than the ability to crawl naked on gravel.

And if it was about fitness, the authors of the plan were even more misguided, as South Africa looked one-dimensional in terms of pace around the field, and tired noticeably against England and the All Blacks.

It brought to mind the story about a former Dunedin schoolmaster who used to make recalcitrant boys lie across the main cricket pitch as the first XI practised.

He apparently believed it useful for his bowlers, who tended to pitch the ball up to miss the cringing youths, and his batsmen, who were tested more thoroughly on the front foot.

It didn't go down with local parents and the headmaster was eventually ousted, which could well be what happens to Springbok coach Rudolf Straeuli in the next couple of weeks.

Sport has grown away from the militaristic approach from yesteryear, when Dickensean school masters used to run behind the practising backlines with a cane in case any player dropped the ball.

Even the legendary US basketball coach Bobby Knight, renowned for ranting and raging at his players, pushing them, throwing chairs at them and deliberately embarrassing them, eventually saw the errors of his ways.

Far better to embrace positive reinforcement, specific training programmes and all the technological help you can get your hands on to empower the players and develop team capacity.

The South African cricket and rugby teams are taking a while to learn the lesson.