HOCKEY: Julian Drew
SOUTH AFRICA eagerly awaited the 1993 Africa Cup of Nations tournament in Nairobi as their first step back into international competition, but this year’s version has come at an awkward time for a side preparing for greater things. In three months time South Africa will take part in the Olympic Games in Atlanta.
“It’s actually at the wrong time for us. Right now we’re busy with endurance training and it would really be better to have another couple of weeks of that. Obviously we have an obligation to Africa and we’re very conscious of that but out of choice we probably would not have played in this tournament as part of our preparations for Atlanta,” says South African captain Wayne Graham.
Besides lacking physical sharpness and having spent no time with stick and ball in recent weeks, in terms of match practice for the Olympics only Egypt will provide anything approaching the standard of opposition required to prepare for competition with the world’s best.
In Harare last year South Africa and Egypt drew 3-3 in the final match which gave South Africa the gold medal and its Olympic berth, but in the other games, against the same opponents that will be in Pretoria, South Africa were convincing winners.
South Africa will, however, play in a four-
nation tournament in Australia in May against the home side, lndia and New Zealand, followed by a three-test home series against Spain.
“It is a concern that we’re not able to play against some of the bigger nations more often before Atlanta but there’s only a certain amount we could do between the announcement of our participation at the Olympics in February and the Games themselves in July. But at least we are fortunate to have the Australian tour and the games against Spain coming up,” says Graham.
The squad of 16 for the Africa Cup contains only one new cap and just three changes from the players who did duty in Harare last year. The nucleus of the side which has been built up over the past year and a half is still there and it is unlikely there will be too much in the way of experimentation.
“There’s a core of eight to 10 players who have been together since September 1994 under Gavin Featherstone (the team’s British coach) and we’ll obviously be building on the patterns and disciplines we’ve established during that time. We will expose some of the newer, younger players to the side but essentially we’ll be working on what we’ve already got because the one thing we’ve lacked in international hockey is a solid base to work from.
“We have maybe six players who can really go out and compete on the world stage and hold their own against anybody but that’s not enough because if you pick up one or two injuries to that core then you have a serious problem. Prior to going to the World Cup our top
players probably had about 40 international matches behind them and that’s now up to around 55 or 60. By the time of the Olympics it will be about 70. You actually need a squad of 20 who have at least 50 internationals to be able to compete at the highest level and your best players must have more than a hundred caps,” says Graham.
Once the team has got a few more years behind it then South Atrica should be able to draw on such resources. That will probably happen in time for the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000 which is where the South Atrican Hockey Association (Saha) is aiming to make an impact. “The average age of the team is currently 23 and by the time Sydney comes along it will still be only 27 and we will also have some of our good youngsters coming through. We missed out on Barcelona because we didn’t have the opportunity to quality but at least we will have experienced the pressures and atmosphere of an Olympic Games if we go to Sydney which will be a big plus,” says Saha president Steve Jaspan.
Over and above the need for more international matches and greater exposure at the highest level Graham believes that the main area South African players need to focus on is their mental attitude. “Once you get a squad of experienced players you can compete at the top level but the problem is doing it for the full 70 minutes. Not even sixty nine and a half minutes is good enough because the top teams will beat you in those other thirty seconds.
“The thing I try and emphasise with new players coming into the side is that the difficult part about competing is not the 70 minutes on the field. That’s the easy part. It’s what you do for the rest of the time like how you train, what you eat, how you sleep and what you do in your spare time. You can’t just walk the streets of whatever city you happen to be in. We can’t go walking the streets of Atlanta for two weeks.
“You have to stay focused and concentrate on why you are there. It’s very easy to get distracted off the field and that can affect what you do on the field. It can be a bad umpiring decision, something in the crowd or whatever, but if you lose concentration then you are going to lose. The ability to develop the mental toughness and concentration to compete for the full 70 minutes is the difference between the really good sides and the rest who are just below them. It is something you can work on but it will mainly come through experience,” says Graham.
“I sincerely believe that as long as we keep getting exposure at the highest level then we will develop this. The main thing is that we are managing to keep our foot in the door at the major competitions while we are still developing as a team which is important. If you miss out like our women’s team did for the Olympics then the gap just widens,” says Graham. What Graham and his team will have to concentrate on for the next week though is the Africa Cup. “Even though its at the wrong time for us we will make no excuses. We are the leaders in Africa and we must show that,” declares Graham.
This weekend the Africa Cup of Nations gets under way on home turf at the Pretoria Technikon and will culminate next Sunday with the final match featuring the two top sides from last year’s All Africa Games in Harare, South Africa and Egypt. All the teams play each other once and the Cup is decided from the resulting points table.