Bok humiliation caught on video

By Lee Rondganger, Stephen Nell and Lourens Schoeman

The full extent of the gruelling, military-style training the Springboks suffered at "Kamp Staaldraad" prior to the Rugby World Cup has been exposed.

Calls from all quarters for heads to roll in the Springbok and SA Rugby Football Union managements are growing ever louder. But some of the World Cup squad have defended the controversial training, saying it had forced them to bond in the face of adversity.

On Sunday night the M-Net programme Carte Blanche featured video footage from Kamp Staaldraad showing the players, all of them naked, carrying railway tracks and tractor tyres and standing in a freezing dam as part of their training.

During the exercise, players were forced to cook a chicken and boil an egg but were not allowed to eat them. The footage also showed instructors smashing eggs, which had not been boiled properly, on the players' heads.

Shock images from the camp were leaked to Independent Newspapers titles late last week, with photographs of the Springboks, naked and exhausted, splashed on front pages. Sunday night's Carte Blanche showed a clearer picture of the hardships they endured.

The programme aired interviews with Springbok coach Rudolf Straeuli, Bok manager Gideon Sam, captain Corné Krige, scrumhalf and former captain Joost van der Westhuizen, player Ricardo Loubscher, sports psychologist André Roux and Bok security consultant Adriaan Heijns.

Players were whisked away to the camp hours after Straeuli announced his team for the Rugby World Cup in Australia. Despite their training, the Springboks were knocked out by New Zealand in the quarterfinals.

Sam said the exercise had been "mild" compared with what many African people endured every day, and it had helped to build strength and discipline within the team.

"I have no problem with it."

Asked why the players were naked during the training exercise, Heijns - a former police task force member who ran the camp - said it was to "level the playing fields" and remove all prejudices.

Krige said that when they were standing in freezing water in a dam, a few players had approached him and said they couldn't take it anymore and wanted to leave.

They had made a collective decision to leave, but were ordered back into the water by the instructors.

Krige denied reports that guns were pointed at players during the camp: "The only times guns were used was at the start of an exercise and to wake us up." All the players interviewed on Carte Blanche said the exercise had helped them to prepare for the World Cup - but some were unhappy at being photographed naked.

Springbok hooker Dale Santon said he had found the camp a good experience, but found it difficult to explain the images to his five-year-old son.

"That is the big problem. He wants to know why you are naked in the paper. Who sold those photographs to the newspapers?" But Santon said the camp had, overall, been a good experience: "What we went through will remain with us for years and we will have a good laugh when we have a reunion one day. It's like a bond that is difficult to explain to an outsider."

However, some rugby officials, several former Bok captains, Anglican Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane - the Boks' unofficial chaplain - and former South African rugby boss Louis Luyt are calling for management's blood.

Sports Minister Ngconde Balfour has called for an urgent meeting with the game's top brass.

"Reports emerging from the Springbok camp oblige SA Rugby and the SA Rugby Football Union to act immediately and decisively by taking the public into their confidence through revealing complete details of all team preparations for the World Cup," Balfour said in a statement.

"I have already requested administrators to meet me this week and will extend this request to members of the team as well if I deem it necessary." Sarfu presidency candidate Brian van Rooyen described the pictures of the Boks as "terrible". "The players looked like prisoners of war," he said.

The shock images will almost certainly end Straeuli's Bok coaching tenure. He has not commented on any detail about the camp as he has not yet made his World Cup presentation to the board of SA Rugby. All he said on Carte Blanche was that the exercise had been important for team-building.

Individual board members have privately expressed their disgust at revelations of the camp and, combined with Straeuli's handling of the Geo Cronjé/Quinton Davids race row, as well as South Africa's quarterfinal exit at the World Cup, there is very little prospect of his retaining his job.

Ndungane has called on the SA World Cup management to apologise to the nation.

"It concerns me that this barbarous approach may be justified. I have no doubt the team will be leaned on to justify the whole affair, and may well do this. If this happens, it will be a travesty."

"You don't motivate people with jackboot tactics, and the proof is certainly in the World Cup pudding. I am not surprised our boys in green did so badly in Australia.

"More importantly, what happens at World Cup level filters down all the way to our schools rugby. This is not the standard we want to set for our children."

Several former Springbok captains on Sunday lashed out at Kamp Staaldraad, saying it had been barbaric, humiliating and uncalled for in modern times.

Former Bok captain Abie Malan, vice-president of the Springbok Captains Club, said camps like these should have no place in South African rugby.

"Every time something controversial happens in rugby, South Africa is somehow involved. It is so unnecessary, as there are other ways to prepare players mentally and physically," Malan said. "This time it is particularly bad for our national team."

Malan said the Captains Club would issue a statement on Monday.