Martina Navratilova had a Bushtucker Trial on Wednesday night that involved swimming around a large Jacuzzi filled with gunk, looking for six items of clothing. For a woman with nine Wimbledon singles titles this was child's play. Thing is, after five minutes of gulping gunk, Navratilova had managed to find only two items with stars attached. She had not exactly failed, more like she had gone out in the second round.

She tried to conceal her upset, but she could not hide it. “I am p***ed off” she kept saying, as Ant or Dec tried to tell her two stars was OK and that what they really wanted was vomit from the former tennis star, or at least a visual reaction to the smell. “I thought by swimming low I'd cover the area but my technique didn't work,” Navrativola continued. She stomped off back to camp, telling us “my team-mates will support me, they know I did my best”.

It was already in my mind that I wanted to look at defeat this week: how different sportsmen and women deal with it. And before our very eyes, one of the greatest sports stars the world has seen was reminding us that, generally, they do not deal with it very well at all.

Navratilova took a leaf from the Jack Nicklaus school of defeat management - she did not blame herself, she blamed the technique she had adopted. Nicklaus blamed everything but Jack; if he let himself take the blame, he feared that would weaken him mentally. If the putt did not go in, it was probably down to a spike mark.

A few years ago I read a quote from a Canadian woman tennis player who was ranked in the mid-100s. “Every week I turn up somewhere and I play the match and sometimes I win one and occasionally two, but I always know that I am going to get beaten at some point in that week and then I fly off to some other place for more of the same,” she said. For her, defeat was all too familiar and inevitable.

The cannon-fodder who make up those golf and tennis tours know it is going to happen. They do not even appear to analyse what went wrong - almost better to be slightly delusional, like Nicklaus, and think you are perfect but the world is not, than the other way round.

Twelve days ago Rory McIlroy, the golfer from Northern Ireland, missed out on his first European Tour win, losing in a play-off in Hong Kong. “I've got to take the positives. If I don't win one of the next two events I will win early next year,” he said. Taking positives is one of the preferred options for top sportsmen and coaches in the immediate aftermath of defeat. Paul Ince, the Blackburn Rovers manager, has been taking lots of positives from his team's performances lately, but no points. And after the Carling Cup quarter-final defeat by Manchester United on Wednesday, Ince failed to face the press. Sometimes even the most positive coaches just cannot find anything nice to say.

Martin Johnson, team manager of the England rugby union side, stopped talking about taking positives after the record defeat by South Africa at Twickenham 13 days ago. “It was a brutal lesson and we need to pick our heads up,” he said. After Saturday's loss against New Zealand, he did not even seem to have any negatives he wanted to take away. “If you play like that you will get killed,” he said. Folk waited nervously outside the dressing-room door to see if he meant it.

Somehow between now and the start of the Six Nations Championship on February 7, England have got to try to get out of what is looking very much like a losing streak - without playing a match. A wholesale change of personnel is not an option; Johnson has to stand by the players he is grooming for the future. He may change some of his team, but his conundrum is how does this group of players learn to win together?

According to my better half, Kenny Logan, defeat was never a foregone conclusion, even in the middle of a nine-match losing run for Scotland. “Even against the All Blacks we honestly believed we'd win,” he said. So how do you get out of it? Extra training? No training? “Go for a big night out,” he said. The alcohol will not change the way the team play, but the honesty it elicits might help to break down a few barriers and bring out a few truths. “Suddenly players start to say what they are really thinking and a few niggles come out, a few things are said you might not like, but they need to be said.”

You might think that playing a team sport shields you from those moments of raw exposure, experienced so painfully by golfers, athletes and tennis players. Not so. Apparently it was the norm in a Scotland dressing-room that after a defeat the selectors and coaches would stand in a huddle while the players changed. They would discuss individual performances in a whisper. Occasionally they would all look out from the huddle to one player and immediately he knew he was likely to be axed for the next match.

Certain players who were clearly culpable for crucial missed tackles, or giving away five penalties, would arrive in the dressing-room ready with their defence. “They'd have decided already who they should throw the blame to. Most of us knew what they were doing, but if it saved their ass for the following week's match they didn't care,” Kenny said.

In 2000, Scotland gave Italy their first Six Nations win and Kenny took most of the blame with a below-par kicking display. Watching the match at work that afternoon and seeing Kenny's face as he trudged off the pitch, I decided that my new boyfriend needed me. So in a fit of romantic pique I booked myself on to the last flight to Rome, landed at around midnight and found him at around 1am.

He had had a few drinks, which had anaesthetised the pain, and had found enough fighting spirit to defend himself when a bar full of Scots started abusing him. He even strayed into Nicklaus land and muttered something about the hard balls they used in Italy

I realised he was OK without me that night. It was the next day when the full horror of defeat hit home. He rang his old pal, Gavin Hastings, for words of encouragement; he rang his Wasps team-mates for signs he was still needed by them; and he went to bed early, without a mention of the hard Italian balls.

And on the Monday he went to a field by our house with a bag of balls and kicked for about three hours. You've just got to get straight back on the horse, as they say. Navratilova and Johnson might agree.

Explore Columnists

• Graham Spiers