[Image Source: Sports Illustrated]

2oceansvibe’s bi-weekly sports columnist, Sean Wilson, covers Lion’s coach, John Mitchell’s recent suspension, and asks: are the Lions a bunch of fancy gentlemen with a low capacity for criticism?

You know you’ve had a bad season when the coach has been suspended for abusing the players and the public immediately assume that the players deserved it.

Who needs to know what Sergeant Major John Mitchell actually did or said? Even if he ordered the Lions to stand in the Jo’burg morning cold wearing nothing but shorts while he whipped and abused them, it still wouldn’t be enough to garner any sympathy from the public. After all, plenty of us had to endure the odd P.E. lesson in the eighties.

Before his suspension, the natural standing point for South Africans was to have nothing but admiration for Mitchell. After all, he came to this country with a glowing coaching record from New Zealand, where the rugby grass always seems greener.

It’s not like he had it easy when he came here. He took the Lions job in 2010 after they had finished their Super 14 campaign without winning a single game. They were lucky that a 15th team was allowed into the competition in 2011, otherwise they would have had to suffer the indignity of SANZAR renaming the tournament ‘The Super 13 and the Lions’.

Mitchell showed himself to be one tough customer, and that’s a quality that comes in handy in Johannesburg. After he got stabbed by an intruder that broke into his flat, he managed to keep it together and go straight back to training. Apparently, when the intruder broke in, Mitchell thought it was his flatmate because “he’s a bit of a prankster”. That put his living arrangement into perspective. For most of us, the worst flatmate we’ve ever had is someone that left notes on the fridge to tell us that we used some of his coffee.

Then a year later, Mitchell delivered what previously seemed impossible: the Currie Cup. In no time, he’d built a team to lift the historic trophy. Players who were previously unknown outside of Gauteng were drinking beer from the cup, waxing lyrical into microphones explaining what a wonderful coach Mitchell was. Fans had filled Coca-Cola Park to watch the Lions for the first time since it had been called Coca-Cola Park, all of them proclaiming Mitchell to be the Messiah.

Fast forward to today, and how things have changed. According to the players, with a tip of the cap to Monty Python, “He’s not the Messiah. He’s a very naughty boy”.

What, the players have turned against John Mitchell? Traitors! Brats! Pansies! Win some games, get away from the bottom of the log and then come with your sob stories, you bunch of labour law-reading nancy boys!

Now that we’ve had a little while to overcome the initial shock, maybe the public should wait until they’ve heard both sides of the story or at least wait until more information on the issue has been given before they give their final judgment. After all, these are the two golden rules for forming an opinion on a public matter.

As an outsider, it’s hard to find a balanced moral standpoint on Mitchell’s immediate suspension. All the information we have to work with is that the players had a long list of grievances against the coach regarding the way he treated them, and that Lions president Kevin de Klerk thought it was serious enough to warrant an immediate suspension.

So for the moment, the information is a bit light on juicy details.

Surely it wasn’t just swearing at the players, was it? One would imagine de Klerk wouldn’t have taken such drastic action if that was the only gripe of the players.

If it was, one would hope that the Lions players have thicker skins than that, otherwise they would risk being teased by the rest of the country. After all, how could any abuse given by a New Zealander be worse than an average day’s insult one receives in the Cape Flats? In club games over there, coaches shout out some spine-tingling, A-grade abuse every time one of their players so much as knock the ball on. Players still return to practice the next week, even if they heard some things they really didn’t want to know about their mothers’ lady parts.

If you liked that, then CLICK HERE to read the rest of the story and catch more of Sean’s insight’s over at www.SimplySean.co.za!