Who is accountable?

In the wake of the ‘performance review’ undertaken by SARU of the incumbent Bok coach, it brought to mind some thoughts as to who exactly is accountable for poor results. The natural inclination is always to blame the coach when things go awry, and that may often be justified, but sometimes I feel we are too quick to jump to conclusions.

I have just seen a headline on a rugby site, stating that players need to control the controllables, and the main controllable is their fitness. As a mental coach I always preach the need to control what you can and accept the things you cannot. However at what stage does a player’s fitness become his job, and at what stage does the responsibility rest with the conditioning coach, or the physio or the biokineticist or his Pilates instructor or personal trainer or indeed the Head coach? At what stage does a player’s skill levels become his responsibility, and when does it rest with the skills coach, the head coach, the coach he had at school etc? Surely, as professional or semi-professional players trying to make it to the top of their game, the accountability of peaking in their performance should rest with them? When players may be battling mentally, I find it is very rare for them to seek out help from a mental coach or psychologist without being prompted by their union, club or school. My underlying point is that although the head coach is indeed in charge of his team and accountable for his results, at some stage accountability needs to rest on the players themselves, and to examine whether they, in line with their job descriptions and performance areas, are meeting their requirements and more importantly doing all they can themselves to meet them.

The second area of accountability, and one that I believe is extremely relevant now, is that of the administrators. In my opinion, sport administration is simply political and removed from true performance evaluation. In the corporate world, recruitment is seen as massively importance, with the hunt for scarce skills and top talent being a vital ingredient of organisational performance. Should the recruitment be poor, the performance will suffer, and major questions will be asked of the recruiters. Now we sit with an obvious skills gap within the Bok coaching structures, and all the blame is pointed at the coaches themselves, whilst the administrators sit ‘giving their full support’ and ‘conducting the due processes’. How often do we see coaches being selected at all levels that are just not up to the job, then when they fail, as they inevitably were going to do, the fingers are all pointed at them, and not the recruiters. When selecting coaches, all sorts of areas need to be examined within their skills range. I have written an article before highlighting what a complete coach should look like in fact. My belief is that often administrators either recruit poorly or support poorly (WP officials complaining about young talent at a time when WP are finally doing well) and thus the coach ends up looking worse than he should do due to poor administration.

I fully agree with performance reviews, and people needing to be accountable when things go wrong, but I would like to challenge who truly is accountable for what in the world of sport. And therefore when things become cut-throat as they often do, the correct people’s reputation suffers, and the correct people carry the can.