COMMENT: Abusing and shaming athletes achieve nothing positive

THE 11-year-old goalkeeper never had parental support at junior football games, which left him vulnerable to Robin. You must know Robin. There’s usually a Robin at most school sports fixtures. In the mirror, he sees a cross between Pep Guardiola and Phil Jackson. In reality, he’s a feeble individual with a video camera, a notepad and no friends.

So he bullied those without parental support. He bullied me.

I was a distinctly average 11-year-old goalkeeper with limbs resembling bits of string stuck to a strip of Scotch tape. You see, I can say that because it’s self-deprecating writing and a rather needy attempt at sympathy. When Robin said that – and he usually said something cruel – it was a middle-aged man with a Hitler haircut bullying a defenceless boy.

On Sunday mornings, he’d set up a tank-size video camera on a tripod to analyse a muddy scrap between giddy boys still waiting for their testicles to drop. Win, lose or draw, the volunteer coach offered grainy match analysis that no one had asked for. Being the goalkeeper, I bore the brunt of Robin’s drivel. He was neither constructive, nor kind, just a tiresome pub bore, tearing a prepubescent keeper to shreds.

Naturally, I hated Robin. As a kid, I fantasised about parking that tripod in his nearest orifice. As an adult, I still see Robin in different sports, even different countries.

I once attended my brother’s football training session and saw a coach hit one of his players so hard in a tackle, the player flipped over. The thudding, physical contact echoed through the indoor sports hall. The session involved under-nines.

On another occasion, a match involving my nephew’s under-12 side was accompanied by so much colourless invective on the touchline, I started playing sweary bingo with myself. The abuse was another surreal example of a level of bullying not accepted in other childhood pastimes, unless parents spend their days at Sengkang Library, screaming at kids to “stick the f****** book into the back of the f****** shelf”.

Difficult but necessary steps towards safe sports

So the little boy in me applauds the sterling work of the men and women of Singapore Aquatics. The national sports association recently launched the “Hands Up For Safe Aquatics" campaign, to increase awareness of being safe-sport compliant. The initiative shines a light on the gloomiest corners of competitive sport, eager to protect the aquatics community from physical, psychological and sexual abuse.

Swimming has long been a sensitive sport, when it comes to determining the boundaries between coach and athlete in training sessions that invariably involve physical contact.

At a holiday training camp, the resident swimming coach once asked a nine-year-old me whether I’d like to be held around the waist or under the chin for my Herculean attempt to complete one length of the children’s pool. I informed this stranger to take me by the chin, as my waist was ticklish. As a consequence, my mother now has a swimming certificate that reads, “Neil Humphreys completed 10 metres freestyle … with aids.”

She had that certificate framed.

But where is the line? Where does physical contact begin and end? Singapore Aquatics are answering these difficult but necessary questions with the Safe Sport Commission Singapore and the Singapore Coach Excellence Programme, insisting that aquatic coaches who renew their certification must follow the principles laid out in the Safe Sport Unified Code, which was launched two years ago. Wonderful stuff.

But what about Robin? He’s still out there, poolside, courtside, pitchside and most definitely online, still spouting clichéd, "quote of the day" fluff about mental toughness. A little bit of bullying goes a long way in his world.

Only it doesn’t. Bo Hanson, a three-time rowing medallist in the Olympics and a leading coaching consultant, is one of many experienced athletes and coaches to point out the detrimental impact of the hot-headed screamer on the touchline. Screaming at an athlete to “work harder” without the requisite physical and psychological training is about as effective as screaming at a rice cooker to “boil faster” without pushing the right buttons.

Modern sports has moved on from the abusive

Any short-term gains that may come from pacifying a bullying coach won’t be sustained because an athlete cannot perform at such elevated stress levels indefinitely. The anxiety becomes debilitating and self-defeating. Shaming a performer, either publicly or privately, has to be counter-productive. (Robin often told me I was crap in front of my peers and his abuse didn’t turn me into Ederson.)

There’s no room for the abusive anymore. They are unwanted and outnumbered.

According to the latest National Sports Participation Survey, sport participation in Singapore reached an all-time high last year, with 74 per cent of 4,500 respondents aged 13 and above taking part in sporting activities at least once a week. And aquatic sports are among the top five sporting activities, making the association’s efforts to draw a distinction between a motivational coach and a bullying curmudgeon all the more timely.

It’s a handy template to follow, but a complicated one for a small country, indoctrinated from an early age to remember that there are no natural resources and not enough carrots to go round. There are plenty of sticks though. The tekan culture stubbornly endures, from the kindergarten classroom to the sports field, an approach which must be a roaring success on the greatest sports stages.

Oh wait. There was Joseph Schooling. And he wasn’t bullied into submission. And now there’s Shanti Pereira and she wasn’t either. Maybe Singapore Aquatics are onto something. A safe, nurturing sporting environment seems a far more productive use of everyone’s time than all that Jurassic histrionics from vein-bulging screamers on the touchline. Modern sport has moved on. They should too.

Neil Humphreys is an award-winning football writer and a best-selling author, who has covered the English Premier League since 2000 and has written 28 books.

You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. Also check out our Southeast Asia, Food, and Gaming channels on YouTube.