Steak, the World Cup and good bones

I have to confess that the highlight for me of Saturday’s World Cup game was the steak. We braaied, of course, and it being a special occasion, I got in some prime rump from the nearby Famous Butcher’s Grill. It is not cheap, but with a teriyaki marinade tends to evoke the sort of eyeball-rolling good food should.

I watched the game, but found it agonising, as usual. Watching sport is agonisingly boring, when you don’t care about the outcome, or agonisingly exciting when you do. I think watching competitive sport is what some confuse for having their own lives.

Also agonising was watching young Schalk Burger slam his reconstructed neck into various players. All 125kg of him, and a fused neck, and he just threw himself around with reckless abandon. I was left completely limp by the time the game was over, between that and trying to work out whether that was a try or not …

But they were all obviously fit and well fed, and like us had been feasting on the fat of the land, or at least the protein of the land. Are there any vegetarian Springboks? I don’t know enough to say, but it does look like the manne eat well, and in dear Os’s case, have clearly been doing so since he dragged the apocryphal plow around the farm.

The biggest of the team are huge — I hate to think what the team cook goes through, trying to keep them all in good nick. Of course, some of the contenders for the next squad are probably drinking protein shakes right now, and hurling themselves against trees and other useful things to scrum against. Some are not — a delicate matter, and one it seems churlish to raise so soon, while the glow of victory is on us, but where is our transformed team of 2015 eating now? Are they too, feasting on prime rump? Or are they actually wrestling with the sort of chronic malnutrition that leaves stunting, rather than the kind of bones the squad will need?

I am afraid that identifying talent is one thing, but you have to get the kind of nutrition in place that grows 125kg of bone and muscle (and in Burger’s case, steel) over the long term.

The cricket team have also wrestled with the legacy of bad nutrition in childhood, in the form of injuries. The school feeding programmes are part of the answer but their collapse in the Eastern Cape points to no one strategy being the answer. The basic income grant is one idea that seems little mentioned these days — whatever the plan, I hope those with starry-eyed plans for a more diverse team in years to come first take a long, cold look at what is on our children’s plates.