Ken Borland

Garreth Ewing has resigned with immediate effect as the national men’s hockey coach and there are fears in South African hockey circles that the fine performances he achieved with the team were merely hiding the level of maladministration in the game and tough times lie ahead for the team.

Ewing made public on social media on Tuesday the reasons for his shock decision to leave his post, just before the FIH Nations Cup tournament starts in Potchefstroom on November 28. The 48-year-old said his resignation was “a final response to an accumulation of events … These were starting to impact on me, both personally and professionally. The weight of it all was putting strain on my relationships, both inside and outside the team, and my health, both physical and mental”.

Describing his decision as “an act of self-care”, Ewing said he will “look forward to falling in love with hockey again”.

Under his watch since 2019, South Africa were winless and last in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, despite beating Germany 4-3. They were, though, invited to participate in the elite Pro League and earlier this year they reached the semi-finals of the Commonwealth Games for the first time in 20 years and have qualified for next year’s World Cup since then with their strong showings seeing Ewing nominated this year for the FIH Coach of the Year award. They have moved up to 14^th in the world rankings.

But insiders speak of all these achievements being despite the administration and not because of it. One stakeholder from the sponsorship market told The Citizen “SA Hockey are the most amateur and disorganised sports body we work with”.

Amongst the frustrations cited by those around the team are the players being told three days before leaving for Malaysia and the recent Sultan Azlan Shah Cup that they had to come up with R41 000 each to play in the tournament.

For the FIH Nations Cup in Potchefstroom, which will decide the one team who joins the Pro League next year, the South African team will not be staying in the Astro Villas next to the venue, but instead the home team has had to stay in a school boarding house free of charge. This is because SA Hockey allegedly missed the deadline to apply for accommodation.

It is apparently not the first time SA Hockey have missed a deadline. Potchefstroom were going to bid to hoist the 2026 World Cup and were ready to fly to Switzerland to present their case, with SA Hockey only needing to get permission from the Department of Sport, which they failed to do.

The team are also apparently furious that the SA Hockey Association did not bother to vote for either Ewing or star SA women’s player Phumelela Mbande, who was nominated for the goalkeeper of the year award.

The lack of sponsorship for the national hockey teams is well-known and they have had to resort to crowdfunding to attend the previous Olympics.

“We want to know what work has been done to get a sponsor? Sponsors have told us that they don’t know if the money will go to the team if they do invest, and if we get a sponsor, then SA Hockey says they have to go through their marketing department. How are we meant to prepare properly when we only know a week before for sure that we’re going to a tournament?” a member of the national squad said.

While the North-West University love hosting international events in Potchefstroom, it is believed SA Hockey still owe them money for hosting fees. The Citizen were not able to confirm this with the university’s hockey administration, however.

Since the much-admired Marissa Langeni stepped down as CEO in April after more than 12 years at the helm, SA Hockey appointed an interim CEO in Shaune Baaitjies, who has a BCom Honours in Industrial and Organisational Psychology and describes herself as a leadership coach on her LinkedIn profile.

SA Hockey have also not held their election for a new executive for more than a year, reportedly because president Deon Morgan was making a run for a position on the FIH Board. He has now been elected as part of the executive team at global level and it is believed a date and nominees have been decided for an election, but no statement has been made by the federation.

Baaitjies did not respond to questions about all these issues sent to her by The Citizen.

Although it is a mass participation sport at grassroots level and both national teams are impressively transformed, how hockey is going to ensure sustainability with all these leadership issues is a massive concern.

Not once has South African men’s hockey coach Garreth Ewing suggested that the FIH Hockey Pro League will be anything but daunting, and it will get no easier for his team as their next assignment sees them travel to Argentina to play the 2016 Olympic champions in two Tests on April 23 and 24.

Having hosted a leg of the tournament in Potchefstroom in February, in which they lost all eight matches and conceded 52 goals against Germany, France, India and the Netherlands, South Africa are now well aware of the high standards in the competition.

“It was harder than we expected, I must admit,” Ewing told The Citizen. “But it was really disappointing that it took us a bit long to adjust to the tempo, admittedly against very good sides.

“There was improvement through the tournament though and we were quite disappointed not to get a couple of results in the end.

“Although it was a mentally and physically tough tournament for us, it was a very valuable exercise based on the squad we had, the rotation of players and the opportunities we gave them.

“We also made some tactical progress in terms of the areas of the game without the ball – how you pressurise the ball and utilise space. And there were glimpses of good counter-attack,” Ewing said.

South Africa will be bringing a new-look squad to Argentina, due to the unavailability of some of their players, the bulk of whom are amateurs. But, on the positive side, regular captain Tim Drummond returns, having been absent during the local leg of the Pro League.

“We’ve had selection issues and the unavailability of players is an ongoing challenge. So there will be quite a few changes,” Ewing said.

“Having Tim back will make a big difference, especially in terms of his experience and leadership. We’re playing in Buenos Aires, so we’ll be up against big crowds, which we are not used to over the last couple of years.

“There are still some technical weaknesses we need to sort out, both in attack and defence, in terms of how we hang on to the ball when we have it and the pressure we exert without the ball.

“There was a bit of a lack of continuity due to getting things wrong at just the wrong time. But at times we were really good but just didn’t get good outcomes. We would get to the circle but just not get the ball in the goals,” Ewing said.

The FIH Pro League that will be hosted in Potchefstroom from Tuesday provides the South African men’s team with the ideal avenue of measuring their progress against the top hockey nations in the world, according to national coach Garreth Ewing.

South Africa will come up against India, the Netherlands and Germany, all inside the top-six on the world rankings, in the tournament that runs through to February 21 and features 14 matches, eight of them involving the hosts.

“It’s an amazing opportunity, although it will be incredibly tough,” Ewing told The Citizen. “But we’ve got to play against the very best in the world if we are going to find out what we need to grow as a team.

“You’re never going to play against teams in the top eight of the rankings without them being strong outfits, but teams in the Pro League do mix up their line-ups a bit.

“It’s often used an opportunity to expose new players because it’s considered the beginning of the next Olympic cycle. And that’s the same as what I’m doing. But the top sides will have their usual superstars here as well,” Ewing said.

South Africa’s squad will include three players who have graduated from the ‘pram’ of the SA U21 team into the senior game – Clayton Saker, Connor Beauchamp and Sihle Ngubane.

And the prodigies that are the Cassiem brothers – Dayaan and Mustapha – are both back in the fold.

Unfortunately, South Africa will be without their regular captain, Tim Drummond. Because hockey is strictly speaking an amateur sport in South Africa, many of the players don’t have much leeway when it comes to taking leave from their full-time jobs and the veteran midfielder has had to declare himself unavailable.

Fellow Olympian Keenan Horne takes over the captaincy, with Tuks star Bili Ntuli, a member of the national team since 2015, his deputy.

“There are a few changes, but we have the bulk of the Africa Cup squad that won the title last month,” Ewing said. “And we’re taking a 23-man squad to Potchefstroom because we have quite a few games in a short space of time.

“Leave has been a big issue for some guys, but that’s the nature of the sport in this country. So we are going to experience some serious pressures, but it’s more about the experience of playing really hard matches than the results.

“We’re going to have to pay a lot more attention to defence and tap into the counter-attacking strength we used so well in the Tokyo Olympics.

“We need to be a lot more comfortable on the ball under pressure, and this tournament is an invaluable opportunity to get experience of that,” Ewing said.

Garreth Ewing has enjoyed an excellent trophy-winning run at both provincial and club level, making him an obvious choice as national men’s coach and now he faces his greatest challenge as he takes the South African team to the Olympic Games.

Ewing first made his name as the coach of the dominant University of Johannesburg side and stints as coach of both the Southern Gauteng men’s and women’s teams brought success at that level too. Parallel to that, Ewing has been involved at national level since 2004, as a selector, video analyst, team manager, high-performance trainer and assistant coach. Some of his most notable work, however, has been with the SA U21 side, taking them to an IPT final for the first time and securing an outstanding 10^th-place finish in the 2016 Junior World Cup in India.

And now he is the head coach of the senior men’s side, preparing for the Olympic Games. And probably no-one could have more knowledge than Ewing of all the steps in the pipeline, and all the players who have made that journey, as South Africa look to shine in Tokyo.

The Olympics will be a formidable challenge though as they are grouped with world champions Belgium, Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and Canada in Pool B. But Ewing reckons some of his best work has been done under immense pressure.

“I’m very lucky to have learnt so much from all those different roles, it’s a huge advantage and I’ve coached a lot at provincial level, at every age-group and for both genders. When I first started, I was a bit hard-arsed and focused on results. But I’ve shifted more towards getting the process right, getting the players to perform at the right times, like in knockout games. I think I’m quite good at that, I think I’m calm under pressure and that would be my greatest strength. When there’s turmoil inside, it’s important how you communicate with the players.

“If you’re going to the Olympics, you expect it to be daunting, and all of our opponents, except for Canada, are ranked in the top six for good reason. Canada are in the top-10 and have earned that. But if we were in the other pool [Australia, Argentina, India, Spain, New Zealand & Japan] it would be exactly the same. The teams we are playing against have styles that we are familiar with though, so that may be an advantage,” Ewing says.

Although Ewing self-deprecatingly says he was always “the worst player in quite good teams”, he played Premier League hockey for many years for both Randburg and RAU. But he was never a sleeper when it came to the desire to coach; that yearning first began when he was at Randpark High School.

Which is where his nickname of “Springdog” originates.

“It goes all the way back to high school. We were playing at Springs Boys High and I managed to singlehandedly bugger up a whole game, which knocked us out of a tournament. It’s a helluva long drive on a bus from Springs back to Randburg and the team called me ‘Springsdog’ all the way back and it stuck.

“But I was very influenced by Garth Neilson [a leading figure in both education and coaching] and so I became a student coach to earn some pocket money. I started to take it a bit more seriously when I got to Varsity and was playing first team for RAU. And then I was very involved for a very long time at UJ – from 1999 to 2019. The set-up there was so good and we had extremely strong players, so my profile increased.

“I did enjoy playing but I liked coaching more and I can remember the turning point came when I was double-booked – I had league games as both a player and a coach at the same time, and the decision was pretty simple. I haven’t picked up a hockey stick in anger in a long time,” Ewing said.

Just a look at the prices of hockey sticks these days will give an idea of the challenges facing South Africa’s largely amateur set-up in taking on fully professional teams on the international stage. Without much official backing from either SA Hockey or Sascoc, they had to resort to crowdfunding to raise the R3.5 million required to prepare and go to Tokyo.

But a wonderful new relationship forged with the award-winning digital brand specialists Matchkit.co has proven very fruitful and Ewing believes it points to the way forward for South African hockey.

“Matchkit have been a really good partner. The money raised is a drop in the ocean compared to what we need to remain competitive going forward, but the short-term opportunities have been very favourable and it’s very encouraging. I don’t think we have put enough value in PR, and working with those professionals has been really refreshing,” Ewing says.

The lack of proper marketing of the national hockey teams bugs the keen cyclist and golfer because he worked in public relations before he became a full-time coach.

And it is not the national team that pays his salary either. Like many other hockey coaches, Ewing has had to go back to school to earn a living.

“Since I was around 30 I’ve really tried to do fulltime coaching as much as possible and I’m very privileged to work in a wonderful sports department at St John’s College. That gives me the flexibility to work at national level.

Before that I was fortunate to have two stints overseas. The first was as a player/coach in the UK at Holcombe. I wasn’t really ready then but I learnt from my mistakes. Then I took a post for a year at the University of North Carolina, before spending two years at North-Eastern University in Boston. They had very strong operations environments, big budgets and extremely hard-working athletes.”

The two things Ewing wishes South African hockey could have in the near future are for the national teams to spend more time together and for club hockey to become more professional.

“An element of centralisation would allow for more time together as a national team. Even three months spread out through the year would be a help, it would make such a difference from a high-performance point of view.

“I would also love to see our club leagues become more professional and serious. Our top clubs nationally should be a bit more aware of the big world out there that their top players will be facing. I love the social aspect of hockey, that’s a huge part of the game, but performance is not taken seriously enough.

“We don’t train enough, we get away with practice twice a week and we don’t do any conditioning work. I don’t want to lose the social side of hockey, but we also need to focus more on high-performance,” Ewing says.

Not that he believes his Proteas minnows are going to be squashed like bugs in Tokyo.

“There was really intense competition for places in the squad and I’m very optimistic that we have a good core of players. There are definitely enough young guys who can go to the next Olympics and probably the next one after that as well, plus a core of experienced players who have been consistent. It’s a pretty balanced squad.

“When I committed to high-performance coaching, I decided I wanted to go to the Olympics, so it’s a personal milestone for me. As a professional you always want to test yourself against the very best, so the Olympics and the World Cup are that.

“So it’s a big thing for me but it’s not about me. I’m very humbled to have the opportunity and I’m very aware of the significance and how important it is for the players. So I feel a lot of responsibility on my shoulders,” Ewing said.