Why were our water polo teams so badly beaten at the Olympics?

 

I could write a book on this. Many of our top ex-players have commented on the poor performance of our water polo teams at the Tokyo Olympics and most of them are part of the story I’d tell. I was just an outsider looking in. I did that for 30 years, though, and the story hasn’t really changed in all that time.

In fact, the reason why I can come up with a lengthy rant like this on a Saturday morning is that it’s not an original story. There are parts of what I’ve written below that I lifted verbatim from an article I wrote 15 years ago after the SA team was thumped at the World Championships.

The bottom line is that water polo in this country is its own worst enemy. I’ve told polo people down the years that your downfall is that you eat your own young. That’s harsh, but certainly it’s true to say that there are only a handful of you spread across the land, yet you are incapable of getting along with each other.

Provincialism is rampant, but that applies to other sports too. The problem with water polo, in my view, is that too many nasty, toxic narcissists have served in senior positions (and in positions lower down) over the years. They seem to hang around for ever, and rise through the ranks, and no-one is capable of getting rid of them. In fact, like in politics, it seems that being an A-hole is a pre-requisite for certain jobs.

The result has been that decisions are made for the wrong reasons, capable people (many of whom are not too kosher themselves anyway) are left out of management or fired from coaching positions. Our best players aren’t chosen for teams – too often they don’t make themselves available for selection - and transformation hasn’t been managed as successfully as it has been in other codes that face the same problems.

Then there’s a dysfunctional mother body that seems to be anti-water polo and has down the years tried its best to hobble one of its own divisions through interference, poorly conceived transformation strategies and non-funding. In fact, the national swimming body sees water polo as a potential source of income for itself, rather than as something it should be investing in.

There’s no money of course, because they messed up their last sponsorship so badly and the former sponsors poisoned the well so effectively that no sponsor will touch them, despite the fact that swimming has been our most successful code at the Olympics (and is again this year, so far).

So, to get back to the question, why do our teams, with so many talented players in them, get beaten so badly? Well, obviously we are overmatched. We are up against fulltime professional players who have been participating in top leagues and international competitions for four years since the last Olympic Games. Our players got into the water as a team for the first time after they arrived in Tokyo. They had to pay for their preparations themselves, while their opponents have been given all the necessities and luxuries needed to succeed at this level.

We never had a chance, but there were moments in games when both the men and women showed what could be. The top players in the world were dispossessed on occasion and there were times when the opponents had to use all their skill and experience on defence to keep us out, and we still got some of them excluded, and scored one or two great goals.

One of our most experienced administrators compared watching the games to a documentary on clubbing baby seals, and then he had a go at the provincial affiliation of the coaching staff. Well, I watched every match and from time to time our little seals turned on their attackers and snarled at them, making them take a careful step back. That’s what we expected of them and, for me, it made it worth getting up in the middle of the night for.

The wisdom of going the Olympics in the first place has been questioned. I agree that we should rather be playing in second tier competitions where we are more competitive, and we’ve done quite well in some of those over the years. I remember reading at the time of our readmittance that, for water polo to continue as an Olympic sport, there has to be a representative from all five continents, including Africa there. That’s what the five interlocking rings mean. The Olympic Charter requires that the game be played on four of the five continents, but in the spirit of things, the continental champions of all five are invited. So there’s always a slot for us (or Egypt) and I guess we have to be there or there’s no chance of us ever improving.

But we really do have to do things better. The solution is actually quite easy, on paper. Create a development system that builds on the undeniable talent that we have in our schools (and include transformation in it), institute a better competition structure, get rid of the A-holes and appoint good administrators. Then choose the best players and the best coaches and support them financially.

I know that’s probably never going to happen, not all of it, but we could make a start by simply learning to get on with each other. And, for Pete’s sake, stop eating your young!