Habana's secret weapon
Bryan Habana gave an unexpected answer when I asked who had been most crucial in helping him recover his form in the last couple of months.
I thought he might mention Blue Bulls coach Frans Ludeke or perhaps Springboks boss Peter de Villiers.
But intead he eulogised about "Doc Sherylle" and described her as "a vital cog in helping me back to my best".
He added: "She's helped me put myself back on the map again and hopefully I won't stop working with her for a long time to come."
Perhaps I shouldn't have been so surprised.
Dr Sherylle Calder is the only person to have won back-to-back Rugby World Cups, with England in 2003 and South Africa in 2007, and her website contains glowing testimonials from Jonny Wilkinson, Sir Clive Woodward and Jake White.
Habana even believes the Springboks went off the boil last year because they stopped employing the visual awareness coach. He is now paying for her services out of his own pocket.
I went to meet Calder at her base in the Sports Science Institute of South Africa to try and find out the secret of her success. Her small office, tucked away on the first floor of a grey building next to Newlands rugby stadium in Cape Town, looked completely unremarkable from the outside.
But inside the walls were adorned with memorabilia given to Calder by some of the biggest names in rugby.
There was a photo of Habana with the message "Thanks for making my eyes as fast as my feet", alongside a Springbok rugby shirt signed by each member of the 2007 World Cup-winning team and a picture of Calder embracing Wilkinson.
Calder, a lean 50-year-old South African, began by showing me a compilation of handling errors from Saturday's first Test on her laptop. She believes Lions winger Ugo Monye would have scored both his try-scoring opportunities if he had better visual awareness.
"He wasn't aware of the South Africa players coming at him quickly enough," Calder explained. "If he had been, he could have put the ball under his other arm or turned his shoulder."
Neither the Lions nor Springboks are employing a visual awareness coach for this series.
Calder then replayed the closing minutes leading up to Wilkinson's famous drop goal in the 2003 World Cup final.
Every element of the move, from Steve Thompson's long lineout throw to Matt Dawson's darting breakaway, was executed perfectly under the most intense pressure imaginable.
"Along with the other England coaches I had worked on the elements of that move time again and again," she said. "For example, Steve had developed his judgement of depth and Matt had worked hard on his peripheral vision and reaction time."
People also forget that prop Trevor Woodman safely gathered Australia's restart, timing his jump perfectly and turning his shoulder to evade George Smith and Phil Waugh while keeping both eyes firmly focussed on the ball. Even international full-backs would have been proud of his technique.
"That was as crucial as Jonny's drop goal," insists Calder, "because if Trevor had dropped it Australia would have won the final. "And a large part of it was visual awareness."
Calder splits her work into three main areas - seeing what you do with accuracy, processing the information quickly and working on response time. Split seconds count in elite sport.
She takes me through one of the exercises she uses with her players by way of an example. I have to stand facing a large plastic sheet with about 50 circles on it and every time one lights up, I have to touch it.
Sounds simple.
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After about 20 seconds Calder asks how many circles I think I managed to hit and I say about 50% of them. So I'm shocked when she looks at her laptop and tells me the figure was actually 13%.
And this was the slow setting, on which Habana would expect to have a success rate of more than 90%. The worrying thing is that I hadn't even seen most of the circles light up, because my peripheral vision and response times were so poor.
This is the type of exercise the England players practised again and again when they worked with Calder from 2002 to 2004. Woodward was so impressed with the South African's work that he tried to sign her up after becoming director of football at Southampton in 2005.
By that time Calder had already been approached by White to work with the Springbok rugby team though. As with England, her impact on the team was dramatic according to the players.
Captain John Smit says he had had a 64% success rate throwing into the lineout up until that point, yet he didn't miss his target once during the entire 2007 World Cup.
The Boks also scored several intercept tries during the tournament and the handling of all their players, even front-row forwards like CJ van der Linde, seemed to improve greatly.
Which makes it so surprising that Peter de Villiers chose to let Calder go when he succeeded White as Springboks coach last year. At least Habana is still benefiting from her expertise, which the Lions could rue in the second Test on Saturday.
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Wow, sounds like she could make a sportsman out of anyone.
Is she with any team now?
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Fantastic blog. really interesting to delve into the science of sport. Why aren't the WRU down on their knees begging this lady to work for them?
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great blog y did england let her go after 2003 success?
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Simon...nothing personal, but in an exercise lasting 20 seconds your success rate was 13%...ouch, that's gotta hurt buddy!
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Interesting blog but before everyone jumps on the visual training bandwagon, there is very little evidence (other than anecdotal) that it actually leads to enhanced performance. you have to question some of the methods used, like the one above in the video, which is not sport specific at all. There is published research that suggests this type of generalised visual training doesn't work (Abernethy and Wood, 2001 in Journal of Sport Sciences)
I would suggest Mrs Calder is very good at exploiting what she does for maximum publicity. She presented at a conference a couple of years ago in the UK, which I attended, and struggled when asked for the evidence underpinning her programmes. Think about it, did Steve Thompson execute that throw in the final well because of sports vision training, or did he do it because he's been practicing executing that type of throw every training day of his life since he was a kid! Sports vision might have a place in an elite athletes programme, where every extra percentage counts, but until there is hard evidence I think you have to view the technique with a modicum of caution.
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If you look back at England around 2003 the entire team had excellent handling (with the exception of Ben Kay butchering that try...). These days, the hands are much ropier and there does seem to be an element of precision lacking from the England game.
I'd love to see her work with England or the Lions again because I truly believe that you can train your brain to be faster, and therby your hands and feet more accurate, by this sort of work. When I went to apply for the RAF I went through a battery of tests similar to this to establish my aptitude for fast jet training. It all went surprisingly well but unfortunately my eyes let me down!
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Couldn't agree with you more Simon. Sherylle spent half a morning with our Provincial hockey team at the beginning of our season a couple of years back and we went on to do far better that year than the previous 5 years. It was all simple stuff but really eye opening - in more ways than one.
The Bok coach has proven that he has a bit to learn, hopefully he doesn't have to learn tomorrow though.
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Sherylle is a very intelligent lady who I had the good fortune of knowing in the early 1980's when we represented the same university at hockey. She was a Springbok hockey player for many years and quite frankly in a class of her own. What she now teaches, she employed very successfully herself, at the highest level.
Sherylle is humble and serene, and sadly not appreciated by the likes of Peter de Villiers.
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Waldo0 - spot on. 13% was dismal. My TV colleague Olly Foster got 55%, which Sherylle said was excellent for a first attempt. If you saw my attempt at rowing with the altitude mask on yday, you would have to conclude I am not a gifted sportsman!
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Amazingly difficult task. I've seen some F1 drivers use the same test to improve hand/eye coordination. Just shows that the reflexes of some of the top sportsmen in the world are almost super-human...
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At 0.11-0.13s the pc screen clearly shows you got 2 hits! (blue circles). Assuming that's edited in from the slower 13% effort?
Didn't realise this kind of thing was that trainable, but she seems to get results, Peter de Villiers is clearly an idiot for dropping her.
Many people really don't seem to pay attention to most of the information their eyes (and ears too) send them, doesn't just show up in sports either but simple every day activities from driving to using a computer.
"Split seconds count in elite sport."
They count everywhere, for example, better visual awareness would save lives on the roads, whether it's spotting potential hazards earlier or reacting to them faster.
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For all the SCW haters out there this is a reason why many of us wish he were still in charge. He brought in specialists in key areas to make the 1-2% improvements in the performance of people who are already performing at a level in the 99th plus percentile compared with the general population. When you do that good things happen. The days of "Roy of the Rovers" or "Tough of the Track" (there I go dating myself) guts and glory winning through despite the odds are, in general, done.
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