Six Games to Glory
AT LAST I've seen Invictus, Clint Eastwood's movie on Nelson Mandela, Francois Pienaar and the way South Africa won the 1995 Rugby World Cup, absolutely against the odds.
I'd had mixed reports. Most said it was brilliant. One young lady – a lecturer at Yale – complained that Nelson Mandela came across as some kind of black Santa Claus. Some said the footage of actual rugby was not quite up to the mark, though the story as a whole was great.
My particular interest is that I still have in my possession a document titled Six Games to Glory, which was given to me before the World Cup began. It was written for Springbok coach Kitch Christie by an American who had formed a close friendship with him.
Dr Don Beck, who had a background in psychology, had been working extensively in South Africa's corporate world as a consultant on change. He also had an interest in sports psychology and had assisted his local gridiron side, the Dallas Cowboys.
Six Games to Glory set out the psychological build-up needed for each match as the Springboks progressed through the pool stages, then the quarter-finals, semi-finals and final; also the on-field approach necessary in each match. Crucially important was the opening match against Australia.
I must confess I read it with some scepticism because I didn't think we had a hope of beating Australia, let alone making the final. But I did notice team manager Morne du Plessis quoting from the document at press conferences.
Then I noticed one of Beck's recommendations – that we should adopt an African crowd song – seemed to have been taken up with Shosholoza. Then eventually his other key recommendation – that Nelson Mandela should be persuaded, if possible, to identify with the Springboks – also became reality.
Beck had returned home by the time of the opening match. When it was over I phoned him in Texas (probably getting him out of bed because of the time lag). He asked if the game had followed the phases predicted in the document. Indeed it had.
I can't say Shosholoza and Mandela's involvement were the result of Six Games to Glory. They could have been sheer coincidence. But when you take this with the Boks' steady progress through the competition, Beck was uncannily close to what transpired. Not bad for a … I nearly said Yankee, but as a Texan he would never forgive me. Not bad for a gridiron man.
Beck is a sports nut and a great believer in the social/political unifying capacity of sport. The scenes of utter jubilation right across South Africa, and in all sectors – so vividly captured in Invictus – would appear to bear him out.
Maybe Beck can be persuaded to have a word or two with Bafana Bafana. Football is further removed from gridiron than rugby is, but it's not really the mechanics of the game we're talking about, it's what goes on inside the players' heads and hearts.
Oh, yes. I also thought Invictus was great. That's what happened and that's how it happened. The girl from Yale was quite wrong about Mandela. The sequences of actual play might have been Biff! Bam! Oof! and not much else, but Eastwood didn't set out to give us a technical film about rugby. That was just the background to a great story.
Gridiron origins
AND perhaps gridiron and football are not that far apart after all. I once read somewhere that gridiron had its origins in the 19th century when two American universities set up a football fixture.
When the visiting team arrived after a long train journey, it was discovered that they played different versions of football. One played Association Football (soccer) and the other Rugby Football (Rugby Union). But, one side having travelled so far, they decided to play the match anyway, using an amalgam of the laws.
This might sound nonsensical. Soccer has no resemblance whatever to gridiron – except that soccer's long passes to forwards ahead of the game do correspond to the gridiron quarterback's long passes downfield to waiting players.
I've no idea if there's any truth in this. Does anyone have other information?
Tailpiece
Lawyer: "Paddy, why is it that whenever you ask an Irishman a question, he answers with
another question?"
Paddy: "Who told you dat?"
Last word
The squeaking wheel doesn't always get the grease. Sometimes it gets replaced.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
No comments:
Post a Comment