Straeuli facing axe

The bare facts: Rudolf Straeuli has been condemned for his bizarre regime

14 April 2012

Rudolf Straeuli was today trying to explain the inexplicable to South African rugby chiefs. Yet as the Springboks coach attempted in Johannesburg to justify the scenes of humiliation and degradation heaped on his players in the infamous pre-World Cup "Camp Barbed Wire", nobody appeared to be giving him a prayer of keeping his job.

The extraordinary video of his team standing naked in a freezing lake or huddled together in a pit with only billy cans to preserve their modesty seem ready to sink Straeuli.

Everyone from the sports minister to the bishop of Cape Town has condemned the episodes in the Limpopo bush training camp as barbaric.

Today, as Straeuli's observations about the camp played a key part in his World Cup report to the South African rugby board, the main question appeared not if he would survive but for how long.

He was already perceived to have been at the helm for the 12 most inglorious months imaginable - the Springboks' shocking results capped by their earliest-ever World Cup exit, player thuggery on the field and the Geo Cronje racism row off it. The image of South African rugby now gleaned from the shocking pictures is the final straw. Sponsors are reportedly demanding behind the scenes that action be taken.

It is difficult to see how Straeuli could now see out this storm despite the comments last week from SA Rugby managing director Rian Oberholzer that "he has a contract until 2005 and we have a duty to give him a chance".

He has had his chance, say others. Even if his coaching ability has not exactly impressed, how could this decent man have been persuaded to agree to put his players through the indignities of Kamp Staaldraad?

Ultimately, many believe he did so because he was desperate and could not see any way of a disjointed Springboks squad suddenly gelling before the World Cup.

Yet if Straeuli goes, others could fall with him. The camp organiser, former police special services officer Adriaan Heijns, has since revealed that not just Straeuli but Oberholzer and team manager Gideon Sam all agreed to his proposals about what the players would undergo in the bush. "They all knew what was going to happen," said Heijns.

The irony is that when I talked to South African players in Perth about the camp before the England World Cup game, they hailed it to a man as not just a life-changing experience, but a unique bonding exercise too.

Yet cynical voices close to the team suggest they were then just offering the party line. Now that footage of their naked humiliation - the team's video analyst has been reported to have leaked the material to the media - has been made public, all bets may be off. One player is already threatening legal action for SARFU's alleged violation of his human rights.

"I'll never do anything like that again in my life. I nearly cracked when we were sitting naked in that pit," said winger Breyton Paulse. There, recordings of God Save the Queen and New Zealand's haka, were played incessantly and players had ice-cold water poured over them.

There has been disagreement about whether players were forced to strip and allegedly ordered to undertake tasks at gunpoint. However, enough has been revealed about players being forced to fight each other in the boxing ring or being deprived of sleep by the sound of gunfire every 15 minutes to make the sports minister Ngconde Balfour call the whole thing "dehumanising".

Ultimately, it is what Straeuli must pay for. He turned what should have been simple sports training into a boot camp for elite military recruits. All that just to end up watching them surrender against New Zealand.

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