In an exlusive email to iafrica.com, Professor Tim Noakes has responded to Brendan Venter's Weekend Argus column from last Saturday, entitled 'Prof Noakes is wrong — the more rugby you play, the better you play'.

Noakes — who is greatly respected in South Africa, and across the sporting world, for his views and vast research on the mental aspects and science of competitive sport — has responded to all Venter's claims, one-by-one.

This is Noakes's full, unedited response, whilst a shortened version will appear in Saturday's (11 October) Weekend Argus.

To the Editor: Dr Brendan Venter's column in the Weekend Argus of September 27th, 2008 entitled, 'Prof Noakes is wrong — the more rugby you play, the better you play', contains substantial errors of fact and interpretation and is dangerous to the future health of South African rugby.

Claim: "Peter de Villiers has been told by Professor Tim Noakes to rest his players."

Fact: Coach de Villiers has not spoken to me since May 8th 2008 when he visited me at the Sports Science Institute. If Jean de Villiers and other Western Province Springboks has been advised to rest, that advice has not come from me. Whether or not I would agree with that advice is irrelevant.

Claim: "Given how a supposedly tired Jean (de Villiers) is playing at this moment, I would hate to have to play against him when he is fresh."

Fact: If Jean de Villiers is indeed playing well at this time, then by definition he is not presently "fatigued" or "burned out" or "overreached", according to the standard medical definition of those terms. For the key feature of all those conditions is sustained under-performance; at first barely noticeable; later obvious to even the most biased provincial supporter.

But the issue of player fatigue and burnout is not what happens in the season that the player is performing well and so is continually overplayed by well- meaning coaches. It is what happens the following year.

Classic examples of players who continued to play without control in their year of brilliance (and of which Dr Venter must be aware since his rugby career overlapped with theirs) were Marius Joubert who was on the top of his game in 2004 playing (according to our records) at least 38 matches at high level. Joubert played little rugby at top level thereafter and never again with the same level of excellence. And Henry Honiball who was perhaps the key player in the world-record beating Springbok team of 1998 but who played only one and a quarter tests in 1999, the year that his brilliance was most needed. The history of Springbok rugby is littered with similar examples.

Whether or not those senior players of the Springbok 2007 RWC-winning team who are currently being overplayed by well-meaning coaches will suffer the same fate as Joubert and Honiball is a question that only time will answer.

Claim: "My problem with Noakes's reasoning is that he appears to look at the results and then work backwards" so that "Noakes's argument that players should be rested as (sic) strike (sic) me as the most unscientific views I have heard from a scientist."

Dr Venter makes this claim on the basis of a presentation that he claims he heard me give some time after the 2007 Rugby World Cup. From that presentation he concluded that my "argument revolves around a theory that the Springboks lost the World Cup in 1999 because Nick Mallett didn't take his advice to rest players. Jake White did take his advice, and won the World Cup. For Noakes everything rests on these key facts".

Fact: The talk to which Dr Venter refers happened on November 8th, 2005 and was entitled Rugby Burnout: What evidence? Since that presentation occurred two years before the 2007 Rugby World Cup, I could not then have known the outcome of the 2007 RWC. During and after that talk, Dr Venter raised essentially the same arguments that he presented in his September 2008 column. He was as adamant then, as he is now, that there is never any need to rest rugby players. Apparently events in the subsequent two years has done nothing to alter his conviction.

What I actually said in November 2005 was that if we wished to win the 2007 RWC we had to learn (i) from the errors made by the 1999 Springbok RWC team in the 1998 season whilst they were establishing a new world record for consecutive number of Test victories, as well as (ii) from the reasons for the success of the Wallabies team in that same competition. I then presented the evidence I considered to be crucial as well as extensive information proving that rugby players "burnout" if their match playing time is not controlled and if they do not have adequate rest (of at least two months each year). I also explained how data we were collecting prospectively from the Springbok rugby team in 2004 and 2005 was being used to prepare the team for the 2007 RWC campaign.

So my argument in November 2005 was not that we had lost the 1999 RWC because Nick Mallett had not taken my advice. In fact, he had never sought it. Rather, my contention was that injudious medical management caused the loss of world-class players at the critical time they were most needed.

Years later, Nick Mallett acknowledged to me that he first appreciated the role of the medical support team in world rugby only after his Parisian team Stade Francais had won the French domestic league in 2003 and 2004. The key, he said, was that on the day of the 2004 final he was able to select his team from 30 uninjured players. This he said was entirely due to the work of the Stade Francais sports medical team.

Perhaps if Mallett had coached Stade Francais before the Springboks, 'that Larkham drop-goal' might never have happened. And South Africa might have retained the RWC in 1999.

Click HERE for the rest of Prof Noakes's reply to Doctor Venter...

Who do you agree with? Are the players the ones suffering the most? Leave a comment below!

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