Schalk’s loss creates a psychological challenge

There are some who think it’s nuts, but there I am once a week, slaving up the longest hill in Durbanville, one most other people, even really fit ones, have to at least walk a couple of times on.

It’s become a bit of an obsession, that 20 kilometre midweek run. And early last Saturday morning I tackled it on my LSD (Long Slow Distance) weekend run, making it twice in a week that I climbed to a point that really does feel like it is at the top of the world. I told everyone I would not run the whole thing this time, but would take it slow. After all, the long runs are supposed to be done easily.

But when I got to the bottom of the concrete road leading up Bloemendal, I couldn’t resist it: Up again without stopping or slowing to a walk once, maybe even accelerating as my body gleefully but insanely accepted the challenge.

Not that this training exercise is really about the body. There are four Comrades medals in my cupboard, but not once have I finished the crazy race feeling any satisfaction – only relief mixed with utter despair. As that is perhaps the reason I keep coming back, I have resolved that this year there will be no excuses.

After a long post-mortem, it has been decided that the body has always been strong enough to race the target time. What has been lacking has been the mind. And that is what the Bloemendal run is all about – if you can have an unstoppable mindset on that incline, your mind can be strong in any foot race.

The importance of the mind in sport is something I thought about when Vodacom Stormers coach Rassie Erasmus disclosed to a press conference after the match against the Highlanders that his team would be without Schalk Burger for the rest of the Super 14 season.

The feeling that went through me was a disturbing one of de je vu. It was when Bob Skinstad got injured in a car accident that the Stormers’ successful 1999 season started to head off the tracks. Skinstad led his team to an outstanding win over the Crusaders to have them installed as tournament favourites, but then came the accident, and the momentum was lost after that.

Burger is every bit the talisman now to the team that Skinstad was almost 10 years ago. It struck me recently that Burger is so freakishly brilliant and has such a ridiculously high work-rate that many is the time his name does not make match reports where he actually turns in displays that, if they were produced by an ordinary mortal, would have his name in the headlines.

We have gotten used to Schalk and his freakish, almost superhuman strength. We take his 150% efforts, and the enormous amount of bruising and hurt he pours onto the opposition, for granted. Jake White said it, but it bears repeating – Schalk Burger is worth three or four players in any team.

The Stormers have probably got used to having him there too, which is why his absence, when it happens, is such a terrible loss. There are those who say one man cannot make a sports team, but as I supported the Natal cricket teams of the late 1970s, when first Barry Richards, then Mike Procter and then Vince van der Bijl left huge voids with their departures (the first two to the Packer series and Van der Bijl later to Transvaal), I disagree with that.

One man may not necessarily make a team, but one man can make a difference between being also-rans and championship contenders. To my mind, the Stormers were contenders before they lost Burger, but they are going to have to produce a miracle without him.

But there were two words in that previous paragraph that should offer some hope: “mind” and “miracle”. If the mind is strong, then miracles can happen.

That was probably what Erasmus was thinking when, in between saying it was a massive blow, he tried at the post-match press conference to make light of Burger’s absence. The challenge from now is as much a psychological one as it is a physical one. Without Burger the players are going to have to dig much deeper, and Erasmus wasted no time in laying the platform for the self-belief that is going to be so necessary.

It’s a tall order, but the Stormers did start their turn-around while Schalk was serving his suspension, so the indispensible ingredients of self-belief and strong mind could yet see them prevail against the odds.