Coaching Champions

One can quite rightly object to a lack of proper leadership at government level in South Africa. However, just as one's faith in and hope for the country are waning, something exceptional happens in our local sports environment.


The Springbok rugby team has twice been crowned world champion. In 2010 the Bulls took the most important rugby derby in South Africa to Soweto, and managed to rekindle the Madiba Magic of the Rugby World Cup Championship of 1995. Time and again the Springbok Rugby Sevens team has relied on innovation to outshine teams that are physically superior and display greater skills. Our swimmers and golfers have produced individuals who are the best in two of the most competitive sports on earth. The Proteas cricket team - and the present Test team in particular - will be remembered in cricketing history as one of the best ever. These players and teams are national heroes. Politics may divide, but sports bring people together.


This is what Coaching Champions is about - South African leaders in sport who are the best in the world.


Marco Botha examines structures such as those that Heyneke Meyer submitted to the shattered Blue Bulls Company in 2000 and then gradually implemented. The result was that they became the most respected rugby company and the most feared regional team in the world in the latter half of that decade.


He also looks at how recruitment and career planning can result in continued success. He shows, in detail, how proper analysis of opponents can turn an average team into giant-slayers. Individual skills and sport psychology are also examined. Ernie Els is used as an example of an older sportsman who managed to get his career back on track by implementing small but essential adjustments.


Gary Kirsten and Paddy Upton started a 'new school' of coaching, which employed participative management and leadership to take the cricket team to a new level.


This book differs from other sports books in that sport is simply used as a vehicle to emphasise some universal leadership principles. The lessons learned from some of South Africa's foremost leaders in sport may be applied to sport, in the business world, within a family and wherever one works with people, and strives to achieve excellence.