Ken Borland

Dirkie Chamberlain endured three-and-a-half tough years in the international hockey wilderness, but when the 37-year-old runs on to the park on Sunday for South Africa’s opening match of the Olympic Games, against perpetual gold medal contenders Australia, it will complete a remarkable comeback for the seasoned goal-scorer.

It is a personal triumph for Chamberlain, because she was overlooked for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, despite having 241 caps and having scored 65 goals for the South African women’s senior outdoor team. But suddenly last November she was back in the picture, called up by returning coach Giles Bonnet, who guided the team from 2010-2014, for two Tests against Germany. Having just turned 37, she ended a relatively lucrative career with HGC in Holland and returned to South Africa to push for her second Olympic Games, having played in 2012 in London.

“I’ve had a couple of setbacks in my career since the 2012 Olympics and I just really wanted to go there again, because it is the pinnacle of hockey and was always my dream,” Chamberlain told Rapport. “I had to give myself the opportunity again, otherwise I knew I would regret it once I’ve retired. So I’m really happy to be in Paris!

“And Giles Bonnet coming back to coach was one of the reasons I came back and worked really hard to get back in the national team. I had worked with Giles before and I knew the strength he would bring to the team. We couldn’t ask for a better coach, he has coached the China, Belgium and Canada national teams. And he has also worked with lots of other top coaches.

“So I’m just super-happy he’s coaching us, we’re lucky to have him. That’s what you need if you’re playing in the Olympics – the best. We don’t have the resources and sponsors that push other teams like the top four, but Giles is so passionate and he gives us a sense of calm and belief,” Chamberlain said.

The hurt of being rejected for so long, despite being one of the country’s best ever strikers, was channelled into improving her body and mentality; her ‘other’ career as a fitness instructor has certainly helped Chamberlain prolong her career and give her an unlikely second bite at the Olympics.

“I pride myself on my fitness and keep my body as healthy as I can,” Chamberlain said. “It’s about being the best you can be physically and mentally. Having the right mindset and work ethic definitely helps me keep playing. A lot of players get injured when they are past 30 and that’s when their career ended.

“I find it’s the small details that really help and I spend so much time in the gym to prevent injury. It’s also to maintain my strength and I also watch my nutrition. If you are going to stay at this level, then you have to keep up with the youngsters and the energy they have.

“So I have to put in extra work because mobility and stretching are so important if I’m going to still be able to compete with the strongest and the fastest,” Chamberlain said.

The Pretoria-born Chamberlain will also be helping the youngsters in the squad to get through the whole Olympic experience, which can be daunting, given the crowds will be the biggest they have ever played for.

“With my previous experience at the Olympics, I know what to expect. It’s going to be a packed stadium and you can hardly hear each other, it could be distracting. So we have to focus on that more in our preparation and I will help the others in the team who don’t know what it’s going to be like. We just need to stay calm and shut out the noise, and at least we know what’s coming,” Chamberlain said.

South Africa, ranked 18^th, have been placed in a pool with four teams who sit in the top-10 of the world rankings – Argentina, Australia, Great Britain and Spain.

“Any pool in the Olympics is going to be tough and we have prepared the best we can in Belgium, against the right opposition, like China. The focus was on our weaknesses and our strengths.

“At the Olympics, every team is so on form because this is what they have been planning for, but anything can happen. We’ve focused on what we can control, like working on our structure,” Chamberlain said.

South Africa’s men’s team may also find the going tough in their pool, but their tenacity was shown when they pushed the Netherlands, the world’s number one team, hard on Saturday before going down 5-3. Matches against Great Britain tonight, Germany, Spain and France follow this week, but ace defender Andrew Hobson is confident of their chances.

“We’re definitely not here just to participate, our goal is to get out of our pool and into the knockouts. The teams there have probably beaten us eight times out of 10, but we have beaten them a couple of times. So they know if they don’t turn up then they could be in for a rude awakening,” the Stellenbosch University product Hobson said.

“We have a wealth of experience in our team and lots of pace, so we can draw on that. We are almost known for our counter-attack, so teams give us a bit more respect these days and don’t dismiss us as lightly.

“The Olympics is of course a different challenge, it takes a little while to sink in, but we are confident we’re able to keep the ball and manipulate space as well, we are a more rounded team these days,” the Paul Roos Gymnasium educated Hobson said.

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.

It’s all a bit low-key, but another South African women’s sport enters into World Cup combat this weekend as Giles Bonnet’s hockey team take on Belgium on Sunday in their opening match in Terrassa, Spain.

South Africa, ranked a lowly 15^th in the world, are in Pool D with Australia, Belgium and Japan, with the top side qualifying directly for the quarterfinals and the second and third-placed teams going into cross-pool playoffs to make the final eight.

Belgium, ranked second in the world in men’s hockey, may be an understated force in the women’s game, but they are No.5 in the world and the game has made great strides with the ladies in that north-western European kingdom as well. Bonnet had much to do with the growth of Belgium into a global force, coaching the men’s side for seven years.

With Australia being the third-ranked team in the world, it is crucial South Africa try and take some points off Belgium and 10^th-ranked Japan if they are to make the quarterfinals.

It is South Africa’s seventh consecutive appearance at the World Cup and Bonnet, back as coach for the first time since 2014, has chosen a squad featuring a number of Olympians, including Lisa Deetlefs, a veteran of three Games who has reversed her decision to retire from international hockey.

Bernadette Coston, who played in the 2012 London Olympics under Bonnet, who guided them to 10^th place, is also included.

Jean-Leigh du Toit, Kayla de Waal and Christa Ramasimong were members of the SA Junior World Cup team that performed admirably in Potchefstroom to secure a seven^th place finish and will also have the remarkable honour of playing in two FIH World Cups within six months.

“I have seen tremendous effort and energy from the team since my return to the post,” Bonnet said. “We know we face a tough challenge at the World Cup against some superb opponents, but we are excited for the opportunity.

“I am really pleased with the team we have put together, there is a healthy mixture of youth and experience. We believe that we have the right tools at our disposal to compete against the best.”

With half of the tournament being played on their home turfs in Amstelveen, the prices are low that the Netherlands will complete a hat-trick of World Cup titles, although Argentina have form behind them, having won the recent FIH Pro League and they have appeared in five finals before.

South Africa play Japan on Tuesday and then Australia on Wednesday.

SA squad –Quanita Bobbs, Marizen Marais, Erin Christie, Phumelela Mbande, Bernadette Coston, Edith Molikoe, Kayla de Waal, Kristen Paton, Lisa-Marie Deetlefs, Hannah Pearce, Lilian du Plessis, Christa Ramasimong, Jean-Leigh du Toit, Nepo Serage, Robyn Johnson, Shindre-Lee Simmons, Tarryn Lombard, Bianca Wood, Hanrie Louw, Onthatile Zulu.

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.