SOWETO DERBY DONE AND DUSTED UNTIL NEXT TIME

fee to their muthi man than Chiefs does. I mean how else can one explain the fact that Chiefs have bought every star player on the planet and yet fail to get one better over Pirates?

Kudos galore go out to Pirates for winning the derby. It must be said they are deserving winners. Their ship has been steadier than the Naturana boat. Much less analysis is done on the Buccaneers than Chiefs.

At Naturena every move of the team management gets inspected and dissected; top of which is the revolving door through which die-hard palooka coaches come and go. One hopes that Ernst Middendorp will stay on longer this time.

Failing that Chiefs will soon be doing night-time visitations to the graves of long-gone coaches who helped cram their trophy cabinet.

Moving on, there is the very urgent matter of young Thabo Senong’s Under-20 Men’s national team going to Poland to partake in an age group Fifa World Cup final in May. Is it not amazing how regularly our national teams are able to breeze into such prestigious tournaments almost at the wink of an eye?

Not so long ago. The national women’s team made it out of international obscurity by qualifying for their first ever Fifa Women’s World Cup, nogal as an amateur team.

You can bet your last cent that the experience of going to the World Cup will be a lasting legacy for both the coach, country and players. Our wish at this point in time is that the team at least makes it into the knockout stages of that Fifa competition.

Senong on the other hand might not be such a stranger to high octane tournaments. He at least has been part of the Bafana Bafana technical set-up during crucial international encounters. The last ones had Senong as a sidekick to interim national coach Owen Da Gama just before Stuart Baxter was re-appointed.

We cannot say the same of Desiree Ellis, she is a complete novice at this level. OK Ms Ellis has a successful Cosafa Cup defence under her belt. But then again, Cosafa isn’t very heavy or particularly big in the football neighbourhood.

I mean playing in the region with the equivalents of Eleven Flying Locusts of Swaziland and Tsielala FC of Lesotho and the Elephants of Namibia does not really cause many significant tremors in football.

Anyway, we wish her and the team all the success in France.