There are kids out there who might achieve greatness if they were given the best nutrition, equipment and coaching, says Christopher Nicholson.
Durban - How much of our sporting talent, more especially soccer skill, is wasted because of a lack of opportunity in South Africa? In soccer, our Fifa ranking at present is 61, although we have slumped to 87 in 2012 and had risen to 19 in 1996.
We top the world rankings in Test cricket and Hashim Amla is said to be the best batsman in the world at Test and one-day level. Under apartheid, he would not have been allowed to play for South Africa.
He was poached by Durban High School (DHS) from a school in Stanger because of his precocious talent. South Africa is ranked second in rugby. Our golfers are among the best in the world. For many years, soccer was the Cinderella of sports in South Africa and it has always played second fiddle to the disciplines favoured by the settlers – cricket and rugby.
There are other more complex reasons, including the choice of sport at schools, that have resulted in South Africa falling so far behind the giants of soccer in Europe and South America.
It was not as if athletes with African origins were not the best athletes in the world in virtually all disciplines. One just needs to consider the achievements of Africans and their descendants throughout the world. One obvious example would be the gold medals won by African American Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the impact that had on Hitler’s race theories.
Subsequently African Americans have dominated the sprint events and runners with African backgrounds such as Usain Bolt have established levels of excellence that few will ever emulate.
With time, the middle- and long-distance races became the sole property of the athletes from Kenya and Ethiopia.
Boxing had been dominated by black fighters for decades, and Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali are good examples.
Since their belated entry, African Americans have come to dominate American football and basketball.
Cricket has seen none better than the West Indian team of the 1960s to the late 1980s, with giants such as Gary Sobers, Clive Lloyd and those fast-bowlers, Andy Roberts, Michael Holding and Curtly Ambrose.
In golf, Tiger Woods provides an excellent example, as do the Williams sisters in tennis. English soccer has had its share of black players.
So what is wrong with South Africa? It is clear that the country possessed the athletes – so what is missing? Could it have something to do with social conditions, including diet and the traditions linked to soccer – the coaching and technique of the players?
Football suffered from decades of denial and disadvantage, through the liberation struggle, to a point finally after the advent of democracy, where the game is recognised as the country’s number one national sport, with nearly 2 million registered players.
The earliest mention of the game in South Africa was in 1862 when matches were played in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth between white civil servants and soldiers. From 1880, African and Indian soccer clubs were active in Durban and Joburg.
Racism asserted itself from the beginning and the white Football Association of South Africa was formed in 1892 and national associations for Indians, Africans and coloureds were launched in 1903, 1933 and 1936 respectively.
When I was at school in the 1950s and 1960s, no white schools played soccer at all and the black schools were so deficient in facilities that prospects were very dismal for the pupils. Cricket, rugby, tennis and squash were encouraged and the culture and pool of players established that was the foundation of the success I have alluded to.
The success in the colonial sports arose from programmes dependent on a good diet, good coaching and wonderful resources, including fields and equipment. Our internationally successful cricketers, rugby players and golfers have gone through a development and coaching curve that compares favourably, if not better, than any other country in the world.
Have our soccer players had similar experiences? Many caution against blaming apartheid for all our woes, but it would be naive to exclude its deleterious effects in this respect.
Liz McGregor is the author of a book, Springbok Factory: What It Takes To Be a Bok, where she examines the provenance of our best rugby players. She records that recently the under-13 team, at a mostly black junior school, Dale, beat the mostly white private school Bishops by 50-5, repeating a similar win three years before. Bishops is one of the richest schools in the country and Dale a struggling state school in one of the worst-run provinces, the Eastern Cape.
The excellence shown at junior level at Dale does not produce good adult players.
McGregor writes: “A little further up the hill is the senior school… here the picture is less rosy. Despite its best efforts, Dale College suffers from the ecosystem in which it operates. Here the boys reach that adolescent growth path phase where protein is crucial to building muscle and strong bones. Instead, poverty dictates that the boys eat bread three times a day.”
It is necessary to bear in mind that this phenomenon is not restricted to Dale College or the Eastern Cape. According to Sampie Terreblanche, the Stellenbosch economics professor, there are 10 million people – (out of a total population of 50 million) in South Africa with no visible means of support ie. no jobs, no grants of any form from the government – who must be in a similar, if not worse, position than these malnourished potential sports stars. South Africa scores worst in the world on the Gini coefficient, which means that the gap between rich and poor is the most grotesque in the world.
Not only do we have reason to fear the growth of a revolutionary group of poor people who might provide fertile ground for a political agitator, but we can easily see just how deleterious this is for our pool of future sports stars.
McGregor points out the difference in diet, facilities and coaching at the white schools. “Dale has a small, basic gym. Its rugby coach doubles as buildings administrator because the school cannot afford a full-time coach… This is in sharp contrast to schools such as Bishops, Paarl Gym or Grey College which have entire departments devoted to rugby: specialist coaches, biokineticists, physiotherapists and state-of-the-art training equipment.”
The devastating effects of malnutrition on mental and physical development are probably more widespread than we can imagine. In the cricketing set-up, two examples should suffice. Mfuneko Ngam played three Tests for South Africa in the 2000-01 seasons.
However, fractures in his legs allowed him to play only five first-class matches between January 2001 and October 2003, and after his return he was unable to regain his place in the national team. These injuries were because of a dietary deficiency at a young age.
Monde Zondeki played five Tests and seven One Day Internationals for South Africa. He is also a fast bowler who suffered similar diet-related injuries.
In his first Test, against England in 2003, injury restricted his bowling to just a few overs, but he hit 59 in the first innings and put on 150 for the eighth wicket with Gary Kirsten after South Africa had been in a parlous state at 142 for 7.
In his second Test, against Zimbabwe in 2004-05, he took 3 for 66 and 6 for 39, giving South Africa an innings victory and winning the award for player of the match.
He was the leading wicket-taker in the 2007-08 South African seasons, with 62 wickets at 19.17.
He was named one of five South African cricketers of the year.
After that, the years of poor diet leading to bone degradation took their toll and eventually he could no longer perform.
In May 2013, he retired because of multiple-level degenerative changes in his lumbar spine.
It was said that his back would not stand up to sustained fast bowling.
McGregor explains how we could train more rugby Springboks: “If we want the Boks to become consistent world-beaters, we need to nurture talent wherever it is to be found. And it is to be found in abundance at Dale.
“It seems to me an opportunity waiting to be seized: it costs only about R30 000 a year for tuition and boarding fees.
“Putting a boy in the hostel means he is properly fed and will not have to beg for taxi money to get to practice.
Invest in the same coaches, mentors and training equipment that Bishops and Grey Bloem enjoy, and you’d soon find yourself with another Springbok factory.”
The same considerations relating to training and diet in rugby are obviously even more applicable to soccer.
Critics are always looking for the golden bullet that will solve all our football woes, including importing foreign coaches.
In my view, Gordon Igesund is a very fine coach and doing the very best anyone could do in the current circumstances.
We can conclude that there are no instant solutions to the problems outlined above.
There are scores of fine football players, herding cattle in the rural areas that might achieve greatness and lift our national game if they were given the best nutrition, equipment, coaching and other assistance.
* Christopher Nicholson is a retired judge.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.
The Mercury