By GARY LEMKE in Lilongwe
The Fifa World Cup has showcased what winning and losing means at the highest level of sport. Images of distraught Brazilian, Dutch and Uruguayan players have gone viral this past week. As have those which show the unbridled joy of victory, with the likes of Croatia and Argentina toasting success.
However, it’s not only at a World Cup where the winners celebrate like there’s no tomorrow and the losers feel that tomorrow will never come. Everyone who has played any reasonable level of sport will attest to the fact that winning is like a drug, while losing drags you into the bowels of despair.
Those feelings were on full display after the boys volleyball final at the Region 5 Youth Games in Lilongwe, Malawi, on Saturday. Zimbabwe’s teenagers experienced the highs of taking the gold medal, while South Africa were left to digest the feeling of coming up short. The emotion was written all over the faces of the entire squad after they were beaten 3-1 (23-25, 25-21, 25-21, 25-16), and as you can see they dared to dream after going one set up in the best-of-five final.
Afterwards, coach Zainul Ally offered words of comfort to lift his beaten charges. “This team needs to stay together because they can be one of the best teams in Africa. They didn’t have a training camp and they live in different parts of South Africa, which makes it difficult for them to grow. But they are the future National team.
“This was not an easy game and we have to accept that Zimbabwe had more firepower than us. We tried our best to cover them and block them but in the end we had to concede. They were too powerful for us.”
In reaching the final, Team SA had to get past Malawi and they did so the hard way, finding themselves 23-18 down on two occasions before turning things around. Some 24 hours later they claimed a tight first set 25-23, having gone 16-12 ahead , before being dragged back to 23-23. However, despite going a set up, they visibly tired from the second set onwards, losing that one 25-21 after it had been tied at 20-20. For periods in the third set they had their noses in front, but from 11-10 ahead they allowed Zimbabwe to win six of the next eight points and later trained 20-16.
In the final set the intensity from South Africa dropped and their opponents looked physically stronger as they quickly raced into a 6-1 lead and then 11-3, and then 19-9. South Africa won five of the last seven points in the game from 23-11 down, but the bird had long flown.
“We played for five days non-stop and the boys gave everything they had in this tournament,” Ally said. “They did very well, in fact they did well to get to the final. It wasn’t an easy journey.”
South Africa did make a lot of unforced errors, particularly a number of long serves and a handful of tame returns into the net. “Unforced errors happen in a game but you have to understand that they are young boys and under pressure. Everyone one wants them to do well. They lost focus at crucial stages but we understand that,” Ally continued. “There’s a lot of potential. The boys learnt a lot and here they played in front of crowds of 2000-3000 fans. They’ve never experienced something like that. We expected to get to the semi-finals, so winning silver means we actually over-achieved. There’s plenty to look forward to,” he said.
All of which shows that as painful as the defeat is, the sun will come up the next morning and the boys can hold their heads up high. Sure, winning is important and provides an unmatched high, but there is no shame in defeat. And when they return to South Africa they will do so with a silver medal in their bags. Which is more than they had when they arrived in Malawi.
Photos: ROGER SEDRES
Source: TeamSA