Let’s stop being so charitable

Although the story may have been told before, my new year wish for South African rugby in 2005 makes a small confrontation I once had with a member of the Springbok squad worth repeating.

It happened at a bookshop at one of the small airports in New Zealand during the 1994 tour of that country. It was a Sunday night and the Boks were preparing to fly to their next destination after a tough test match the day before.

They had lost the match, the series was slipping away from them, and the disappointment was palpable. One of them exclaimed angrily as he was browsing through a New Zealand Sunday newspaper.

“Where is Gavin Rich? I cannot believe what he has written here,” he said. I happened to be standing right behind him. The column he was reading had come from my pen and it had severely criticised the Boks for presenting New Zealand with victory on a platter.

“What kind of South African are you? Where is your loyalty? How can you write something like this in a New Zealand newspaper,” asked the player.

My response was to inform him that I was a reporter, not a supporter, and was duty bound to report on the match in as objective a fashion as was possible. And it was my view that the Boks had made life a lot easier for their opponents by making silly, avoidable mistakes.

The player accepted the argument and later in the tour we ended up sitting next to one another and enjoyed a light-hearted debate on whether Judas Iscariot would have been a reporter or a supporter.

Of course, everyone who reads the sporting press will know that there is no such thing as complete objectivity. It is something I thought about when reading through the British newspapers during the weeks that I spend in Britain on a family holiday from Christmas until the middle of January.

That country possesses some of the most well known cricket writers and commentators in the world, and the product of their musing is always entertaining and informative. Yet not once would a completely neutral reader of their articles have been fooled into believing that they wanted anything less than a resounding England win.

And why shouldn’t that be so? They are writing for a British publication and a mostly British audience. It stands to reason that an England win would attract more readers, and English success is therefore good business.

I know that because it is true of my job too. While the farce and controversy which often attaches itself to the oval ball sport in this country does undeniably also sell newspapers, it also causes people to get fed up and want to switch off.

When the Boks are doing well, and there is a good story to tell, everyone wants to read what the reporter, as opposed to the supporter, has to say. Because of the nature of the job, Springbok rugby defeats are often met with a fair degree of indifference by this reporter. You do want the side to win, but often the special knowledge you have of what has been happening behind the scenes, either at team level or among the administrators, makes a negative result more expected, and it is easier to become dispassionate and let your analytical side take over.

But when it comes to cricket, a sport I love but have not reported on since 1996, I don’t have to make any pretence at being a reporter and not a supporter. When the Proteas are playing an important series I find it impossible not to gnaw my nails down to the bone. There is nothing more absorbing than a great five day test match, and there have been several of those lately.

Being in Britain and reading a media that at the start of the series gave the South Africans next to no chance made their terrific comeback all the more delightful for this South African, and it was noticeable how an initially skeptical English press slowly began to replace cynicism with respect for Graeme Smith’s team.

Don’t ask me what happened on Monday afternoon, the last day of the test at the Wanderers. I was getting my family to Heathrow and had stopped following the game once it became apparent the South Africans only had two sessions to bat out with no realistic target to chase.

“Match drawn, the decider will be at Centurion,” I told my English chums as I SMS’d them on the train to the airport. They all agreed, so what an unexpected bonus the victory must have been for them.

I should have known better though for if there has been one thing apart from tenacity that has been consistent about South African sport since the end of isolation it is the tendency to unexpectedly overturn the grit by giving everything away and presenting victory to opponents as if it is a Christmas gift.

The South African cricketers, as they appeared to at the Oval when they allowed England to make it 2-all in 2003, did just that at the Wanderers. It does not matter how bad a pitch is, you have to back yourselves to see out two sessions if the batsmen had shown the application which gave their fans so much hope earlier in the same match.

How many times have we seen something similar with South African rugby over the last 12 years? As the John Cleese character said in the movie Clockwise when once again he was on the brink of extricating himself from a difficult situation only to be returned into the morass, “frustration I can live with, what I cannot stand is the hope, the hope that keeps offering itself…”

Last year there was much hope for South African rugby, but several forces, not least the poor decisions of management and administrators, conspired against the Springboks towards the end of 2004 and took much of the glint off their earlier achievements.

The Boks face several tough test matches in 2005, it would not be surprising if they ended the season having lost as many games as they win. Most Springbok supporters (and I mean those who don’t double as reporters) will probably join me though in hoping that at the very least they make their opponents scrap for every point they earn and that South African rugby as a whole does not make it easier for the enemy by continuing with the back-stabbing and maladministration that often blights the game here.

Shoddy selection, loss of focus because of off-field issues and ill-discipline which leads to the team being reduced to 14 or even 13 men plays into the hands of the opposition, and every year there are at least a few occasions that these factors cost the Boks a match. When the French arrive in June let’s hope they are up against a well selected and well-prepared Springbok team made up of players content with the way they are paid and treated by their bosses and who have been well managed during the Super 12. At least then the French won’t leave SA feeling that Christmas suddenly came six months early.