The Art Of The Sports Psyche

Know this… whatever sports stars and their coaches/managers say at press conferences, it is never what they mean. What may seem like an honest assessment of the game or a little hint of their strategy always has another agenda.

Let me give a couple of recent examples….

Schweinsteiger on Veron
German midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger singles out Juan Sebastian Veron for praise ahead of the big game tomorrow: “He has played very strongly here, I have been impressed.”

Bollocks. If the Germans were genuinely impressed with Veron, they would never say so. Schweinsteiger is really doing two things here: one, he’s slipping the Argies a little misinformation trying to get them to think they’ll be focusing their attention on Veron. They won’t. It’ll be Messi that they’ll mark into the middle of next week. And two, he’s psyching out Veron. Nothing like your opponent telling you how well you’re playing to put you off your game.

“Schweinsteiger” by the way, does not mean pig shagger as we all thought, but pig inspector. Which, arguably, is the same thing.

Gyan on soaking up pressure
Ghanaian sriker Asamoah Gyan had this to say before their quarterfinal against Uruguay tonight: “We know how to soak up pressure. I believe in my friends, the Black Stars.”

Ja, whatever. If your team couldn’t soak up pressure they wouldn’t be at the world cup. Neither is this a signal of Ghana’s intention to sit back and bravely grit their way through the Uruguayan onslaught. No team would give away it’s tactics that easily.

What Ghana are going to do is kick the living crap out of the Uruguayans in an attempt to intimidate and out muscle them. It’s their only chance to disrupt Uruguay’s well-oiled machine. Gyan’s comment is part of a pre-game strategy to make it look like their robust tactics would be a result of their “gritty and brave defence” rather than the more pro-active “kick ‘em until they cry” tactic it’s more likely to be.

Steve's Crap Car Of The Day

THE AUSTIN APACHE 1971-77

My granddad had one of these. In light blue. Not one of his finest moments.

A shining example of the little-known Mirror Image School Of Design, the front half of the Apache looks, in fact, exactly the same as the back half. A landmark achievement in economy of design. You could genuinely swap the front headlights with those at the rear and no-one would know the difference.

Based on the Austin Farina but re-styled “by the pen of Michelotti”, that claim could well be true… except it’s highly unlikely Michelotti himself was actually holding his pen at the time. “From the pen of Michelotti as borrowed by the janitor while the maestro was enjoying a late afternoon pick-me-up espresso” is a more of accurate descriptor.

Performance wasn’t exactly the Apache’s strong point – that despite a 1300cc engine taken from the Mini Clubman GT. It went from in 18.8 seconds (humans accelerate faster than that) and it topped out at 141km/h.

It’s biggest problem though was that it was made by British Leyland. And not just British Leyland, but British Leyland of the 1970s… which meant it had the build quality of Cornish pastie. The road handling too.

Obviously it now has an appreciation society. But, as we all know, that’s a therapy group in disguise helping its members soothe the pain and embarrassment of owning such a total lemon

Steve's Cool Car Of The Day

LANCIA STRATOS

Before the Lancia Stratos appeared, rally cars were no more than bog standard vehicles in flared trousers. The Fords, Minis, Saabs, and Fiats that won exotic events like the Rallye Automoble Monte-Carlo were your basic rep mobiles with beefy wheel arches.

This was all part of the plan of course. As a manufacturer, one embarked on a rallying program with one specific purpose in mind – to sell more cars. If one’s Ford Escort won a rally on Sunday, one could be sure the punters would be lining up outside one’s dealership on Monday.

Which is why the Stratos pissed everyone off. Lancia not only went and designed a supercar, but at the hands of Sandro Muntari and then Bjorn Waldegard, the bladdy thing won the World Rally Championship in 1974, 1975 and 1976. In fact it would probably have cleaned up for a few more years had FIAT’s (who owned Lancia) bean counters not intervened and insisted a FIAT 131 be rallied instead.

Too bad – at least the world witnessed three glorious years of this Ferrari V6-powered, Alitalia-liveried rocket ship sliding sideways around any bit of road that deviated from the dead straight

A modern take on the Stratos was shown at the 2005 Geneva motor show – sadly the concept never made it to production…

What the FIFA?!?

Yesterday FIFA apologized. I nearly fell of my Lazy Boy. And that’s a difficult thing to do.

They were apologizing for showing the stadium crowd a replay of the Carlos Tevez’s blatantly offside goal against Mexico on Monday evening. Now if you’ve been to a World Cup game, you will have noticed that the stadiums’ giant TV screens never replay anything vaguely controversial. No fouls, no offside replays, or anything of this ilk. God forbid the fans should get wind of anything that could stir them up. Hence only vanilla-flavoured glory moments do we get to see.

Which is initially why the in-stadium TV producer chose to show the crowd a replay of Tevez’s goal. What was meant to be a replay of exquisite ball control and timing, only ended up confirming what everyone in the stadium – except obviously the in-stadium TV producer and the linesman - knew… the Argentinean forward was so far offside he was practically in the Falklands.

Cue a halftime scrap between the Argentine and Mexican substitutes bench. Gotta love those volatile Latinos.

So yesterday FIFA apologized. They vowed to make sure such controversial incidents will never again be shown to the soccer fans at the game. And especially Mexicans sitting on the substitute’s bench. How big of them. How magnanimous and mature of them. How they completely and utterly missed the point…

Firstly – and I admit this is purely a subjective observation – I for one thoroughly enjoyed that little halftime dust-up. Made for some highly entertaining Nacho Libre style entertainment I thought. Finally FIFA had come up with a decent halftime show.

Secondly – and this probably has more relevance to my argument – if FIFA actually used video replay tech properly, they wouldn’t have to bury evidence of their cock-ups. The ref is already mic’d up and in communication with someone - probably Sepp actually. All that need was for Sepp to put down his eisbein, wipe his chin and have a word in the ref’s ear about the goal being disallowed for offside.

It wouldn’t take more than a few seconds so the game wouldn’t be disrupted. Sure, the Argentineans might be a little tetchy, but the proof is proof, and their complaints would be born out of disappointment rather than injustice. And those are two complaints of an entirely different intensity.

Besides, rather than deride and undermine the ref as that incorrect decision helped do for the rest of the game, going “upstairs” to make the right call would only enhance his status among those watching at the stadium and on TV.

The ref is only human. Football fans –though sometimes you’d never say so – are also human. Which means that football fans will give the ref the thumbs up if he had to say “Listen chaps, I’m not entirely sure if old Carlos was onside there. It all happened to quickly for me. Mind if I have a word with Sepp… I mean the TV ref?”

No doubt the crowd would respond with a “Nice one mate/compadre/mon ami/shatzi. Good on you for having the balls to admit you don’t know what’s potting. All we want is the correct and fair decision.”

Horses… they should have horns

Holly loves horses. She’s 7, what does she know. I, however, am 43. I should know better. In a fuzzy moment of fatherly bonding though, I decided that I too would go for horse riding lessons along with my daughter every Saturday morning.

It was all peachy for the first month or so. After Holly’s lesson on a placid little pony ironically called Blitz, I would don my mountainbiking helmet and climb aboard Beelzebub* for a half an hour of genteel trotting around the dressage arena learning the finer arts of horsemanship.

To be honest, it was all a little boring. I had after all piloted a lot more horsepower than this nag. I’m the guy who’s red-lined a single-seater race car at 260km/h, done a World Cup downhill mountainbike race (and come third last), and flown an aerobatics plane. Frankly, horse riding was a bit of a doddle. I didn’t mind though. I was doing it for my beautiful daughter. And who wouldn’t sacrifice a Saturday morning’s adrenaline pursuits for the smile on her face as the two of us headed off to the riding school for some father-daughter bonding. During my lesson, Holly would sit on the fence with a notepad in her hand and mark my performance. I’d get issued with a “report card” afterwards highlighting the many failures in my techniques and the areas I should focus on.

As I said… all peachy.

Until the day Beelzebub snapped. It started off ok, but then he started to get unusually twitchy. He kept speeding up in the dressage arena and whenever I applied a little extra pressure to the bit in his mouth to slow him down, he’d flare his nostrils and swivel one eye back at me in a manner that can only be described as threatening. I didn’t know horses could swivel one eye backwards.

My instructor, sensing that old Beelzebub, was behaving a tad oddly, sensibly switched our lesson from the expanses of the open arena to the confines of the small, fenced coral. And that was Beelzebub’s cue to flip into beserker mode. He took off. And “taking off” within the tight circumference of the coral meant hurtling around the little arena at an alarming speed that no pulling or tugging on the reigns could stop.

We were going so fast and leaning at such an angle in the never-ending left turn that it felt like I was on those “wall of death” motorcycles centrifugally glued to a vertical wall. No longer bothering with the reigns, I was now holding onto the saddle.

While I’d obviously travelled way faster on the many man-made machines I’d driven, at least all of them have had some form of a brake which, when activated, worked. Not being able to stop this bladdy thing was genuinely scary. The reason I really shat myself though, was the look on my instructors face. Hoping for a “Phht, he does this all the time. Don’t worry, he’ll slow down in a second” expression, instead what I saw in her face was wide-eyed concern beginning to morph into actual terror.

After what seemed like a very long time, Beelzebub did – thank the Lord – slow down enough for me to do my best impression of a rodeo cowboy dismount and hurriedly vault the coral perimeter. With a new perspective on how precious life really is I ran over to hug my daughter.

“It wasn’t that fast,” said Holly tearing of my lastest poor report card from her notepad, “Blitz and I have cantered way faster than that.”

I haven’t had a lesson since then. And, as we speak, Holly is having a blast at at the horse camp held over the school holidays.

*name changed to protect mostly me.

Olga...

Our cat Olga died in my arms a couple of days ago. She was 20. In people years. Which is pretty amazing for a cat. It was a particularly poignant moment for me because I saw Olga being born...

When Medina and I first moved in together 20 years ago, we sub-letted a little flat in Chelsea Village, Wynberg. We were both at varsity and it was a pretty dilapidated abode a far cry from the renovated twee perfection that Chelsea is now. Anyway, with the place came a semi-feral feline who, within a week of us moving in promptly gave birth to a litter of kittens. I woke up at 2am one morning, went through to the living room and there she was in the process of giving birth. Olga was the first to be born and the one we decided to keep. Her coat was a swirl of black and orange, and right from the get-go Olg displayed a level of self confidence that was particularly appealing.

I was never much of a cat person at all, and Olg's penchant for doing her own thing fitted in well with my "just don't bother me too much and we'll be fine" attitude. Olg grew up enjoying outside way more than inside and spent most of her active adult life keeping a firm check on the local pigeon, rat, mice, and squirrel population in Chelsea, Green Point and Tamboerskloof as Medina and I moved house over the next 15 years.

Even I had to admit over those years that Olg was a magnificent example of a cat. Proud, independent, a fearsome hunter and protector of our home from other feline marauders.

She slowed down gradually over the last 5 years and enjoyed her retirement as a much loved and pampered pet to our 7 year-old daughter Holly. Things went downhill quite sharply over the last few months as arthritis in her hips prevented her from moving around too much and by the end of last week, it was clear her days left with us were few. By Tuesday both her front and back legs had given in, she was no longer able to digest food and was clearly in a very confused fog. The dreaded call to our vet was made.

Sitting in our kitchen with Olg in my arms, bathed in her favourite morning sunbeam, the vet administered the injection and Olg passed.

Much tears all around.

Olga was with Medina and I from the beginning. She taught us some pretty valuable parenting skills and she was there when Holly joined the family. She'll be missed.

What a great, great cat.

Blog roll

It’s 7:15am. And as I do at 7:15am each morning, I’m sitting on the toilet. Next thing there’s sharp stab of pain in my left buttock which, when one is sitting on a toilet with one’s most closely guarded fleshy bits at their most vulnerable, can never be a good thing, right? A string of expletives and one superhuman leap across the bathroom later, I was ready to stare down one of mankind’s primal fears – as getting bitten on the arse while on the toilet surely is.

Except there was nothing there. No spider, no scorpion, no snake or rat. Not even a fire ant. Once I’d shuffled back across for a closer inspection, the culprit became apparent – a small crack in the toilet seat. It had nipped me. Is nothing sacred? Among the usual chaos that is the early morning at my house, I treasure those few minutes of peace and quiet in the maelstrom of getting ready for school and whatnot that goes on around me. Only now to be attacked in my own inner sanctum.

Having been the one perceived to have “broken” the toilet seat, I was naturally tasked to buy a new one. And that meant having to take the old one into Pennypinchers to make sure I got the right shape for our toilet. Now I don’t know about you, but this was a prospect I found highly embarrassing. Perhaps it’s my uptight English ancestry, but the thought of walking about in public with an obviously used toilet seat is, frankly, utterly mortifying. I could just imagine the normally relaxed customers at Pennypinchers slowly backing away as I entered their store.

“Don’t be an idiot,” said my wife, “just wrap it in a black rubbish bag. No-one will notice.”

So, yesterday, into the store I walked – “skulked” is probably a better word – the rubbish-bagged toilet seat under my arm.

I never even made it past the front reception desk…

I’d probably taken three steps inside their establishment when – without any prompting on my part – the receptionist spotted me and said in a voice just loud enough for her PA mic to catch and broadcast: “Toilets seats sir? Right to the very back of the store.”

Clearly people walking into Pennypinchers with a broken toilet seat wrapped in a black bin bag is nothing new.

And now I realise that two of my first three blogs are about ablutions. I'm not usually like this.