Boks are right to end the annual media circus

The Springboks have started their annual pre-season camp but don't ask me or my fellow journalists how it is going.

Until the open day on Thursday, the media will be as much in the dark about the goings on at the camp as the average supporter.

We are bound to get the odd press release from the communications people at the camp, but when it comes to objective outside observers - well, let's just say there will be none of those present.

New coach Rudolf Straeuli can do what he likes with his players in these first few days he has with them and there will be little or no informed comment from the members of the fourth estate.

Normally a journalist charged with the task of bringing the "truth" to the people out there should object to this closing of the ranks.

If it were not for the fact that the soccer World Cup is taking pride of place in the media at the moment, I am sure that by now we would have seen a headline like "Return to Laager Mentality".

But the fact that for the first time in four years I will not be present at a Springbok pre-season training camp does not bother me in the slightest.

In fact, when I heard that the Boks were allowing only limited access to the police college I nearly let out a whoop of delight. At least the new management has been upfront with everyone concerned by letting it be known from the outset that this week is not about the media circus, but about getting the players socialised into life under the new Springbok coach.

This is far preferrable to the situation witnessed at last year's camp in Plettenberg Bay when journalists spent their time huddled in corners whingeing about the lack of access to the players and decrying what they perceived as a "closed off" attitude to the press.

Although I was at the camp for Supersportzone, I did not agree with the disquiet expressed by my colleagues. To my mind the camp was not being held for the media and the then coach Harry Viljoen was right to shy away from potential side-shows.

I said as much to a journalist working for one of the women's magazines. She had been at the camp the previous year (when Nick Mallett was the coach and the eager-to-please Alex Broun was media manager) for one of the newspapers. During the two weeks in Plett she had written everything you could possibly want to know about the players. She had interviewed their wives and girlfriends, had sat in on their team dinners.

Like several of the other journalists at the camp, she had been able to make full use of the free time granted to the players by sitting them down for one-on-one interviews.

Make no mistake, it was all great fun. Who can complain about a job where all you have to do is sit out on the sun-deck at the Beacon Isle Hotel and wait for the odd player to come by and issue the standard sound-byte?

The journalist phoned from Cape Town to enquire as to why she was being barred from the camp. I told her she was not being barred from the camp, just that the camp was not being viewed by the management as an opportunity to sell the Boks to the public.

Instead it was being seen as a fortnight of intense, hard work geared completely towards the coming test matches. Media opportunities would come later.

I was secretly pleased that the management took this line.

The Mallett management had been way too accomodating of the media and the sometimes bizarre requests they had to put up with.

Those Capetonians who had been confronted with a story during the camp building up to the 1999 World Cup about the colour of Kaya Molatana's underpants would probably have agreed that the Viljoen attitude was for the good of all of us.

The problem for journalists like myself is that often news and sports editors have a different view of what constitutes news value. There was always a chance someone would ask you to follow up one of the stories run in the opposition rag (although I would have resigned rather than ask a player about his undies).

As a result of the Viljoen line, it was only really serious rugby journalists who were at last year's camp. Stories tended to concentrate on rugby related issues, such as the injury situation and the various combinations Viljoen was trying out.

But there were also a few journalists who had been sent specifically to dig out scandal stories. One sat with me at breakfast one morning and spent half an hour unsuccessfully trying different ways to get me to spill the beans about an alleged altercation between players a few nights earlier (the reason I could not shed any light on it was because it did not happen).

He was just doing his job. He had been sent some distance by his editor for precisely that sort of story. But you can understand why the Boks would prefer the likes of him not to be present during a training camp which is often more physically and emotionally taxing than many people might think.

Of course, because the camp was being held in a public place, it was hard for the Boks to keep such people away.

The staff of the hotel could only go so far when it came to keeping members of both the media and the public out of the foyer and the other public areas.

With respect to the people of Plett, there was also another complication about the previous venue - the local people saw the Bok presence as one of the highlights of their year and did not take kindly to it when told the players were not on call to put in appearances at local rugby club functions.

Yes, the Boks do need to place some importance on the outreach aspect of their positions. It is important for them to come across well in the media.

Those articles which tell the public more about the personal players have an important role to play in making rugby "your game", as the advert puts it.

But there is a time and place for it. It is debatable that a pre-season training camp is the right time or place. For once the Boks will be able to eat and sleep in a place where there will be no media, autograph hunters or ticket seekers trying to invade their privacy.

To my mind the value of the venue chosen by Straeuli is not that it will keep the players away from the comforts previously afforded to them, but that they will be able to concentrate exclusively on the things that the camp is being held for.

If it translates into a winning season for Springbok rugby there should not be too many complaints.