Men's hockey: Athens at last
Brad Morgan
21 May 2004
"It's positive! We're playing!" Those were the words of SA Hockey Association president Charles Smith after the South African men's hockey team learnt on 20 May that they would be going to Athens to compete in the Olympics.
The manner in which they secured their berth reads like a movie script.
In 2000, the team qualified for the Sydney Olympics by virtue of being African champions. However, the National Olympic Committee of SA (Nocsa) deemed that there had not been sufficient transformation in men's hockey, and the side was prevented from attending the Games.
That meant a long wait until Athens 2004.
To gain an automatic berth in Athens, South Africa needed to win the African Championships. Essentially, that meant beating Egypt, because a gap in quality exists between Egypt and South Africa and the rest of the continent.
Horribly wrong
At the 2003 All Africa Games in Abuja, Nigeria in October,
the SA team had no trouble with Egypt in the round robin competition, recording a two-nil win, but things went horribly wrong in the final.
Leading the Egyptians two-nil with only 18 minutes left, South Africa had Olympic qualification within their grasp. However, the North Africans hit back with two goals to tie the game at the end of regulation time. Seven minutes into extra time, Adman Elsayed put the South African Olympic dream on hold with a golden goal.
That defeat left Craig Jackson and company with only one more chance to make it to Athens: through the Olympic qualifying tournament in Madrid in March.
However, there would be no easy match in Madrid, with many of the world's biggest hockey powers - including the Netherlands, Spain, Pakistan and India - also making the trip. There were only 12 teams, but achieving a top-seven place, the requirement to qualify for the Games, was never going to be easy.
South Africa was grouped with the Netherlands,
Great Britain, Spain, Japan and Poland, and the side's first contest was possibly their toughest. Facing the Netherlands, the two-time defending Olympic champions, SA never rose to the challenge and was swamped five-one, not the start the team would have been hoping for. Next up was Spain, and this time South Africa lost 2-1.
Two matches and two lost
Two matches and two matches lost. In hindsight, those results were not all that bad because the Dutch and Spanish ultimately met in the final with the Dutch taking the honours.
South Africa needed a win in their next match, and they got it in a big way, sweeping Poland aside six-nil, following this up with a two-one win against Japan.
That meant a draw against Great Britain would be enough for SA to ensure a place at the Olympics. Unfortunately, in a game with so much on the line, South Africa failed to fire, and were comprehensively outplayed by the British, losing six-nil.
It all
came down, then, to the cross-pool playoff clash with Belgium for the final Olympic spot. The Belgians were coached by former South African coach Giles Bonnet, who no doubt knew plenty about his former side. It proved to be a humdinger.
Staring down the barrel
Within seven minutes of the start, South Africa found themselves staring down the barrel, already two goals down to the Belgians. However, the side was not about to fold.
Iain Evans pulled the team back into the game when he slotted a rebound off the goalkeeper's pads. Time, though moved inexorably on and the contest was in its death throes when South Africa's most-capped player of all time, Gregg Clarke (243 caps as of 20 May 2004), scored the most important goal of his career with only 10 seconds left on the clock.
The contest went to extra time, but neither team could breach the other's defences, and so it all came down to the nerve-testing drama of a penalty stroke
competition. After five strokes, the teams were still deadlocked at three-all, both sides missing one and having another saved.
That sent the contest into a sudden-death penalty stroke competition; the first side to fail to convert a stroke would lose.
SA goalie Dave Staniforth rose to the challenge with impeccable timing to save the first of Belgium's strokes, leaving South Africa four-three winners on penalty strokes after regulation time had ended two-all.
It doesn't come closer than that.
Greece appeals
Just when it seemed the road to Athens was finally open, however, Greece appealed to the International Court of Arbitration in Lausanne, saying they should be included in the hockey competition - in place of South Africa, who had secured the last spot - because they were hosting the Olympics.
That meant the South African team had to wait until late afternoon on 20 May 2004 before they learnt their fate. When the
decision of the Court was finally announced, it was good news for South Africa's men's hockey team - at last.
For star striker Greg Nicol, the top goal scorer in the hockey competition at the Atlanta Olympics, it was thrilling to know he would be going back to the big show after an eight-year wait.
Nicol admitted that the team's omission four years previously had been difficult to handle, but now he has the greatest stage of them all on which it make his exit from the international game.
"Personally it will be a wonderful way to bring the curtain down on my career, and I honestly couldn't think of a better way to do it", Nicol said. Well, when that career includes over 200 goals, scored at better than a goal a game, it is only fitting that Nicol should finish everything off at the Olympics.
"It's fantastic for the future of hockey in this country," he added.
Nocsa head Sam Ramsamy, who pulled the plug on the hockey team in 2000, declared his organisation
"delighted" by the hockey team's inclusion at Athens. "Nocsa applauds the Court of Arbitration's decision", he said.
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