Touchline tirade not cool
Theo Garrun is horrified by what he witnessed on the touchline of a Varsity Cup match.
|||MY colleague Greg Hurvitz, who writes a regular piece in this publication, has been criticised for being too harsh on coaches and parents in his columns; for being idealistic and expecting puritanical standards that are impossible to achieve.
That may be true, but bless him for feeling that way. I wish he had been with me at the FNB Stadium on Monday to see and hear the touchline behaviour of one of the coaches at the rescheduled Varsity Cup and Varsity Shield matches.
What I saw would have given him material for another 100 columns and it completely vindicated his call for an entirely new approach to the way we deal with young people in sport. I’m obviously not going to identify the coach in question. He doesn’t read this newspaper, I’m sure, but am confident he won’t carry on the way he did on Monday for too long before the universe, or someone more immediate, eventually takes care of him.I have been around rugby fields for 40 years.
As a coach, referee and reporter, I cannot remember being quite so sickened, and enraged by the behaviour of a team official as I was during one of the games on the B field.I don’t know who he is, but presume that he is the assistant coach of one of the teams – he was standing next to the head coach, who did nothing to stop him throughout the game.
Throughout the match he kept up a tirade of foul-mouthed criticism and insults of an intensity that was quite remarkable.Now, he has every right to be an angry young man, and I do remember what it was like to be passionate about the team you are coaching. However, he really went beyond the pale and was a very poor example to the young people on the field.
His behaviour was in direct contrast to the much publicised values of the Varsity Cup competition which are about putting a humane face on rugby and upholding educational values.“Keep the aggro on the field” is the Varsity Cup mantra.
Well, he was off the field and far more aggressive than anyone on it.He berated the referee and assistant referees and the officials manning the “table”. That’s bad enough, but his insults made directly to the opposition players were particularly odious.
The incident that really sickened me was when an opposition player – so badly concussed that he was vomiting on the field – was shouted and sworn at, and told to get off and “go rest somewhere else”.
This tirade was accompanied by the universal “rolling hands” substitution motion and a call to “take him off and bring on the next one” – what a gesture from a rugby man involved at an educational institution!
Sure, a university is not a school any more, but surely that doesn’t mean all pretence at decency disappears and the players in the opposition team – young men who have chosen to keep the game alive beyond school level, just like those in your own team – are now open to ridicule and abuse and that their physical wellbeing is of no consequence.
It was a sad day for rugby, and there were others along the touchline with me who were equally disgusted.I hope one of them will be taking some sort of action over the incident.It’s a pity you weren’t there to see it, Greg.
Please, keep on having a go at those who don’t conform to the high standards that you champion. If they don’t want to they should keep away from the sports fields. The coach I saw on Monday doesn’t belong within a million kilometres of one. - Independent Media