Something urgently needs to be done to fix the mentality of some of our sportsmen, especially those who represent us in the senior national soccer and cricket teams.
How do you explain what Bafana Bafana and Proteas have done in the past week? Even the amazing performances of the Springboks in France, fails to shame or inspire these sides to do better.
On Friday Bafana produced one of the most shocking displays, nearly giving their 71-year-old coach Hugo Broos a heart attack as they laboured to a 0-0 draw against lowly-ranked Eswatini at the FNB Stadium.
And then on Tuesday the Proteas took matters to another level when, not for the first time in an ICC tournament, lost by 38 runs to no-hopers Netherlands at the Cricket World Cup also under way in India.
This was the same Proteas team we were told, ahead of their match against the Dutch, spent the night watching the Springboks beat France 29-28 to qualify for the semifinals.
The Proteas’ opponents apparently chose to eat pizza at their hotel, not worried a bit about the opponents they had embarrassed and sent packing in a T20 World Cup tournament last year when they beat them by 13 runs.
“I’m still trying to wake up from the late night,” Proteas captain Temba Bavuma said after he had watched Springboks against the French on Saturday night.
It’s all about Bafana’s poor mentality because when our players want to play, like they did in Abidjan on Tuesday, they actually produce great results.
You would have thought that experience prepared the Proteas for the Netherlands game, but the first mistake Bavuma made on Tuesday was to send the Dutch in to bat first and allowed them to score 245/8 in a rain-interrupted match in Dharamsala.
The Proteas were a shadow of the team that gave us some hope of finally winning the Cricket World Cup after sound victories over Sri Lanka and Australia in their two opening encounters. Despite last year’s result against Netherlands, which we thought was just a blip, the Proteas imploded again against the minnows on Tuesday.
By the looks of things, Bafana on the other hand, did wake up from their Eswatini slumber when they played Ivory Coast in Abidjan on Tuesday. The performance Bafana dished up in their 1-1 draw was far better than on Friday, and if it was not for their sloppy defending, they could have even won the match with Themba Zwane’s goal.
“As angry as I was on Friday, I was pleased and happy today [Tuesday],” was Broos’s reaction after Bafana’s much-improved performance in Abidjan. “I think SA played a very good game against a very good team. There was good mentality on the pitch, and they played good football.
“It was not only defending, but the way sometimes we attacked. Ivory Coast were in trouble and it’s a pity that in the second half, the big chance, we didn’t score. Otherwise, it would have been 2-0.”
It’s like we have some kind of a mental block against low opposition when we play soccer and cricket.
While it might have been a first for Broos to experience Bafana playing the way they did against Eswatini, for those of us who have been following them for years, this is a staple diet.
But the huge culprits are Bafana bosses Safa, who still organise international friendlies against lowly opposition like Eswatini, when they know the fans won’t bother to show up and support the team and there’s nothing to encourage Bafana players to perform.
Who can forget what Bafana did in October 2018, when they were qualifying for the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations? Bafana needed to beat Seychelles in an away match to seal their qualification after they had beaten the same minnows 6-0 in Johannesburg.
Stuart Baxter’s team only managed a 0-0 draw which placed the team the a precarious position of having to beat Libya away to qualify. Luckily Bafana managed to beat Libya 2-1 with Percy Tau’s brace, the same Libya that had held them to a 0-0 draw at home.
Even Bafana’s qualification to next year’s Afcon in Ivory Coast was not without some unnecessary drama. Who can forget that Bafana drew 2-2 at home against Liberia before they scrambled a 2-1 victory in Monrovia to ensure they qualified.
It’s all about Bafana’s poor mentality because when our players want to play, like they did in Abidjan on Tuesday, they actually produce great results.
The same Bafana that struggled to beat Eswatini is the same team that beat Morocco, the top team in Africa in June in Johannesburg in an Afcon qualifier. These results puzzle Broos because he’s not used to them, but he’d better be because Bafana are never going to change their ways any time soon.
Bafana will start the 2026 Fifa World Cup qualifiers next month and they are in danger of losing their opening games against Rwanda and Benin if they don’t change their mentality. On paper, Bafana should beat these teams home and away any day, but wait and watch how they approach them.
In the same qualification, Bafana will play lowly-ranked neighbours Lesotho in a group in which they’ll also play Zimbabwe and Nigeria. But look at how Bafana will battle to beat Likuena when they meet next year.
The mentality that the Springboks have must be transferred to our soccer and cricket players because you can’t have the same country with the same people but produce different results in the country’s three most popular sports.
We know that our cricket and soccer players are as talented as the Springboks players. Our soccer and cricket teams need mental training, especially when they’re about to play minnows.
We simply can’t take this abuse anymore.
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