After the last Test of the Springbok End of Year Tour I found it necessary to get into contact with Professor Tim Noakes, SA’s leading Sports Scientist and also a blogger on this web site, raising the issues of player fatigue and knowing that he has been shouting and warning from the rooftops that SA Players will suffer burnout if not managed properly. Maybe it is best if I share the full sequence of the discussions with you lot nosy muppits….

Well here it is… and I warn you, this is for the devoted reader and true rugby lover….

FIRST MAIL:

Tim,
 
One could see the tired bodies and the emotional tiredness on the faces of some Springboks this Saturday, most notably that of Victor Matlield, his expression said it all.
 
What was perplexing however, was that the other 2 major Southern Hemisphere Teams, the All Blacks and the Wallabies, probably had their respective best games of the season on Saturday… no signs of fatigue at all.
 
I can understand the Australian situation, they do not have a domestic competition which rivals the Currie Cup, so play less games in general than South Africans.
 
The New Zealand situation is vastly different though, they have their strong domestic competitions as well and most All Blacks must have played in a similar amount of games compared to the Springboks.
 
Could it be that the Springboks are mentally somehow more fatigued or not properly mentally led by qualified personnel within the Bokke setup… or is it mostly a physical fatigue factor.
 
Kindly explain to me why there is such a marked difference, if you would, by means of a return mail…. I will then put an Article up with the relevant questions and your explanations…
 
Come on, I’m pushing the soap box right in front of your nose now, time to preach to the masses and to the children (SARU) and the unconverted (Unions)… hahaha.
 
Regards,
 
GBS
(Rugby-Talk)

REPLY:

Dear GBS,

The Ausssies and the Kiwi train smarter in my view.  We still have the mentality (in the Provinces) that you have to stuff up the players at every opportunity and that this is how they will develop the discipline to win.   All the rest of the world realizes that matches are excellent training so that once you start playing matches you need to focus on rest and recovery.  The Bok coaching staff know this and rest the players and train the Boks very little when they are in charge of the Boks.

I attach an article I sent to the Cape Times yesterday.  I am not sure if they are going to use it.  You are welcome to use it AS SOON AS THE CAPE TIMES HAVE MADE A DECISION ON IT.  Perhaps you can be in touch with the Cape Times editorial staff to see what they want to do.  I doubt they will publish the article in its entirety but you are welcome to do so.

My major point remains that (i) the consequences of the tour will be felt in 2010 and 2011; (ii) what happened on the tour had been predicted by myself and the Springbok fitness trainer (amongst many others at the Institute involved in monitoring the players) and (iii) the focus of the end of year tour has to change completely so that it is a positive and not a negative for SA rugby.  We have to develop a credible reserve team of upcoming players who can beat the Six Nations teams.  Jake White would be able to do that and there must be other SA coaches who are up to the task.  But unless the team plays together during the year (as I suggest in the article) they will not be able to play to their potential.

Best wishes,

Tim

ARTICLE:

In his article “European tour was a complete failure on the scoreboard, but top Boks were physically shot” published on Monday November 30th, Peter Bills ask if “there is anyone in the Springbok squad and party who can see the wood for the trees?”   He concludes that the Springbok players on the recent European tour were “shot, gone, completely finished”.  As a result “everyone was going through the motions.  Neither their hearts nor their bodies were in it from the start”.  Nor it might be added their brains since it is the brain which drives the body (or chooses not to do so when the body is exhausted).

At a press conference organized in Johannesburg on November 4th by Discovery Health, the commercial sponsors of the Springbok medical support team, I presented evidence to explain why 13 Springboks should not be touring Europe in November 2009.  The evidence related not so much to the certainty that the majority of those Springboks would play poorly on the tour – that was sufficiently predictable that it required no intelligent debate – but rather to the long term consequences of this ill-considered decision.

Since 8 (including Pierre Spies) of those 13 players are from the Blue Bulls, that team will be the first to suffer the fallout from the recent European tour.  For those 7 (excluding Spies whose injury will mercifully insure that he is properly rested before the 2010 season) now require an extended period of rest, preferably 8 weeks if next year they are again to do justice to their proven abilities.

But as a direct result of the European tour, those players will only be properly rested if they miss the start of the 2010 Super 15 tournament.   Their absence from those games will impact on the probability that the Blue Bulls will successfully defend their Super 14 crown.  Alternatively should those players begin training too soon so that they play in the first games of that tournament, they will be insufficiently rested; they will carry their fatigue into the 2010 season; all will under-perform at some time next year and some or all will be injured.   The end result will be that unless either the Sharks or the Stormers can fill the gap vacated by a wounded Bulls team, no South African team will dominant the 2010 Super 15 as did the Bulls this year.  The immediate consequence will be that the Springboks will also not be as dominant in the 2010 Tri-Nations as they were this year since psychological dominance over the New Zealand teams during the Super 14 is an important determinant of Springbok success in the Tri-Nations.   This lost dominance will have to be regained by 2011 if South Africa is to win the 2011 Rugby World Cup.   But that task has now been made more difficult and a positive outcome in 2011 has become less likely as a result.

The Bulls need to learn from the Stormers who were taught a hard lesson when they failed to rest four Springboks at the end of the 2008 season.  In the 2008 season those 4 players accumulated 7937 minutes of match play; in 2009 they could manage a meagre 2830 minutes between them – a 64 % reduction in the return on the investment made in them by the Stormers, Western Province and SA Rugby.  One of those players Conrad Jantjies played almost no top-level rugby in 2009 after clocking 2176 minutes in 2009.   It is my opinion that if each of the leading Blue Bull players who accumulated more than 1800 minutes of match play this year is not rested properly before the 2009 season, some will suffer the same fate as did the Stormers’ Springboks in 2009.

The group of Bulls players includes Pierre Spies (2068 minutes – now injured),  Morne Steyn (2018 minutes),  Zane Kirchner (1961 minutes),  Odwa Ndungane (1906 minutes),  Guthro Steenkamp (1844 minutes – also injured),  Fourie du Preez (1835 minutes).  Victor Matfield who had accumulated 1695 minutes before the European tour, who played two additional test matches on the Tour and the game against the Barbarians and who was clearly the Springbok most affected by end-of-season fatigue, will also finish the season with more than 1800 minutes of match play.   In the past 7 seasons Bakkies Botha has not been able to stay injury-free the following season if he played more than 1350 minutes in the previous season.  Prior to the European tour he had already accumulated 1454 minutes.  Thus his back injury on the tour was a predictable “accident” waiting to happen.

Other Springboks who accumulated more than 1800 minutes of match play in 2009 and who are therefore also in need of urgent, long-term rest are Bismarck du Plessis (2422 minutes – probably an all-time Springbok record),  John Smit (2081 minutes),  Tendai Mtawarira (1913 minutes) and Heinrich Brussouw (1718 minutes).  Their totals do not include the additional minutes they accumulated in the 3 most recent European tests.

Although I do not believe that the underperformance of key players was the most critical consequence of the recent European Tour, I fully agree with Peter Bills’ considered opinions.  It is profoundly disturbing still to read the opinions of those experts who believe that a Springbok rugby player never tires, regardless of what he is forced to endure.  As a result these fundis conclude that factors other than fatigue must explain the poor Springbok performances on the European tour. Unfortunately as Bills writes, this is also the publicly expressed opinion of the Springbok rugby captain.

But none of these experts has offered an alternate explanation of how almost all the players in a team that was so dominant just 4 months ago in the Tri-Nations, can quite suddenly be afflicted by a shared disease of profound under-performance.  The only logical explanation must be that those Springboks, who include some of the world’s best players in their respective positions, suddenly wilfully chose to play poorly.  But no world-class athlete ever reaches a position of such eminence if he entertains such thoughts.  This explanation is just stupid.

The reality is that if the Springboks were playing in the world’s most professional football codes – the National Football (gridiron) League in the United States or the Australian (Rules) Football League – their physical underperformance during these recent test matches would have been measured to the nearest Watt, centimetre or meter per second.   Then there would have been no debate about the extent of their recent physical decline.  The absence of proper measurement prevents the exposure of this truth.

The reason why there is no such measurement is also clear.  Some must believe that it is not in their interests if the real extent of this physical exhaustion were to be established and more widely known.  For then the tired players would have to be properly rested and managed and those who failed to act in the players’ interests might be legally accountable.  Instead we avoid the measurement and so suffer the predictable consequences.

Still other experts argue that on their recent European tours, the Wallabies and All Blacks did not appear as tired as the Springboks.  This apparently proves that our players have no reason to be tired; instead the spectre of Springbok fatigue must be a convenient excuse for those players’ wilful choice to under-perform.   But this conclusion ignores two inconvenient facts.

First, the Wallabies are contractually required to rest for 63 consecutive days each year.  During that period their employers, the Australian Rugby Union, can make no demands on its contracted players.  If the Springboks had a similar contract they would certainly have less excuse to be tired.

Second the New Zealand players especially those from the Pacific Islands, do not train as do South African rugby players.  Rather they focus on explosive training of high intensity and short duration with an almost complete absence of endurance running.  It is my opinion that for those players this form of training undertaken is less exhausting over the course of the season than is the typical training to which South African rugby players are exposed.   Indeed current Springbok conditioning coach, Neels Liebell, is on record as saying that when he finally has control of the Springboks’ training especially on the end-of-the-year tours, he finds that the players are so exhausted that he must focus on rest and recuperation  so that they are able to achieve at least some level of performance on the field.

If the Springboks are indeed more tired than they should be on the basis of the minutes of match play they accumulate each season, then the cause will be found in inappropriately demanding training programs with inadequate attention to recovery during the Super 14 and Currie Cup competitions.

Finally a solution must be found for this end-of-year tour debacle if South African rugby is to move to the next level of achievement.  The intellectual solution to the problem is relatively simple.  Either a decision must be made to exclude from the Currie Cup, all uninjured Springboks who have accumulated significant game time in the Super 14, Tri-Nations and incoming Tours.  During this period they need to be ordered home to spend time with their families.   Or alternatively only those Springboks who have played less than a certain number of minutes of match play each year, different for each player, should be considered for the end-of-year-tour.   Springboks who wish to or are needed on the tour will have to be removed from the Currie Cup regardless of all other considerations.

The leading South African players who are not regular Springboks need to form a team under the best available coach and train together for as long as possible between the end of the Super 14 and the start of the Currie Cup.  Properly prepared for European playing conditions and knowledgeable of their opposition, there is no reason why, under a world-class coach, such a team would not be able to outperform a group of tired Springboks on an end-of-year tour.  Given this responsibility, the team would flourish and finally prove that South Africa does indeed have the depth of rugby talent that is so frequently claimed.

The inexplicable paradox is that those who manage South African rugby have proven that they are deeply committed to making this country the world’s leading rugby nation.  But they seem unable to comprehend the magnitude of the damage that the end-of-year tours inflict on that ambition.

Sooner or later a creative solution has to be found to this self-inflicted problem.  Continuing with the current approach simply makes no sense. 

I thank Justin Durandt and Professor Mike Lambert of the High Performance Centre of the Sports Science Institute of South Africa for the data on Springbok playing times.

Professor Tim Noakes,
University of Cape Town and Sports Science Institute of South Africa, Newlands.

SECOND MAIL:

Tim,
 
Thank you very much for the response and Article, I will contact the Editorial Staff at the Cape Times just now and hear what they say.
 
I see that Mike Lambert and Justin Durandt was copied in to your reply to me. May I use this opportunity to make my acquaintances here with these gentlemen and say that our Rugby web site, www.rugby-talk.com  is a supporter-driven SA Rugby web site, no journalistic bull is sold there, we love and discuss rugby… and when the rugby chatter is exhausted, we just have fun. Kindly visit the site, register there and add your voices to the voice of Tim Noakes, myself and the real supporters out there.
 
Tim, I’m one of the converted as far as your viewpoints are concerned… and certainly share your sentiments regarding the way the Unions train or overtrain the players. It is not the first time that I hear the argument about how differently the Kiwi’s train on the practise field and I now understand the significant difference in the End of Year Tour results.
 
To my mind however, there were other contributing factors too which negatively impacted on the Tour results, some of the major factors being:

• Match squad selection for the 2 midweek games (apart from those selected to go on tour who should never have gone or been chosen) was strange, the use of combinations totally neglected! By this I mean that they employed front rows who had never played with the man next to him and / or behind him in the scrums, the loose forwards were not selected with the proper balance required between a FETCHER at openside, a GRAFTER / TACKLER at blindside and a HANDS OF GOLD STRIKE RUNNER at No 8. In the midweek backline, the halfback pairings had never played together before, neither the centres and the back 3 were from 3 differing Unions as well. In other words, cohesion was neglected.
• The UNDERVALUE placed on scrumming by Gary Gold, who argues that because there is only about 10 scrums per game with your own throw-in into the scrum. What this view neglects is that 10 bad scrums affect ALL PHASES directly thereafter, where suddenly the pressure on ball possession increases, the opposing loosies and backline are in a more favourable position to turn ball over or slow ball down, which again impacts on the phases thereafter. In addition we gave away at least 6 – 12 points in penalties resulting from “Bad scrummaging”…. and that is the difference between winning and losing. We saw WP and the Stormers struggle and have the now renowned “LIGHT FIVE” reputation when Gary Gold was the forwards coach there… and now we see that the Bokke suddenly have lapsed too and are fielding a so-called “LIGHT FIVE”. Face it, our forwards are’nt feared world wide anymore!
• The lack of a PLAN B  and executing PLAN B during game time.
• Playing players out of position and or continuing with the John Smit at TIGHT HEAD experiment, till BJ Botha was finally brought in, injury enforced. This does not only apply to John Smit though, it also spills over to a guy like Andries Bekker who is a typical No 5 lock (in the Victor Matfield mould) and not an enforcer No 4 lock, so to have two typical No 5’s as locks just do not cut it in a game.
• Players not taken on TOUR… in this regard I want to refer to red-hot players like Willem Alberts, Duane Vermeulen, WP Nel, Sarel Pretorius (scrummie), Lionel Mapoe…. the list goes on. In stead, players way out of form (Gurthro Steenkamp, Chiliboy, Ryan Kankowski, Adi Jacobs) and other players who did not merit inclusion in the first place (Davon Raubenheimer, Bandise Maku). If Second Tier strenght is to be developed or “DEPTH” developed, then certainly there are better ways of achieving this…. like making an “EMERGING BOKKE” team and having them play regularly in a year, go on tour and develop as proper backup.

Anyway, one can probably write a book on the contributing factors alone… and opinions differ… I realise that.
 
Enjoy your day, gentlemen!
 
Regards,
 
GBS
Rugby-Talk

REPLY:

Dear GBS,

I agree fully.  We should not fall foul of trying to reduce everything to one simple explanation.  

There is clearly an absence of proper planning and forward thinking.  

These coaches would simply not survive in a really competitive environment like the NFL.  So the problem in SA rugby remains – lack of a really competitive coaching structure that produces world-class coaches who do 99% of things correct all the time – not just ocassionally.  Something has to happen to the end of year tour.  It is a profoundly destructive tour.

Tim