Secret Footballer

Playing dice while in camp with Orlando Pirates

Orlando Pirates in those days was a club caught between the crosshairs of history, achievement and mounting expectation of dominance. On the field we were trying to mark ourselves as one of the most talented generations to don The Bucs jersey. But off it, things could get a bit hairy. Back then, Pirates would camp at a hotel on Katherine Street in Sandton on the night before a game so that the coaches could keep a nice vigilant eye on us. This was to make sure we didn’t get up to no good in our respective neighbourhoods and lose focus on the match at hand. Inevitably boredom set in. To pass the time, we would usually play dice in my hotel room. We shifted the beds and the furniture in the room to make a biggish circle so that everybody could partake. These games often took place on nights before games and we would sleep at around midnight because of them. Steve’s trickery wasn’t limited to the field only, he was a sharp-shooter when it came to playing dice as well. Whenever he pocketed the majority of the night’s betting pool, he would put the money between his legs when he was asleep at night. This was his defence mechanism against anyone trying to pinch the money from him. What sealed his defences was the fact that he always slept naked! It wasn’t uncommon for that money to be spread like a spilt packet of peanuts all over the bed when he woke up the next morning. But the amounts themselves were anything but peanuts. You could walk away with R4 500 in one night, which in the late 1990s was quite a bit of loot. Steve came from Sebokeng township and he was used to the dice-playing culture. He would dabble a bit during the course of the week. It gave him a ridiculously unfair advantage over us. He also liked money a lot, that boy. The sad part was that we were gambling our earnings, but we never felt sad when we lost because the team spirit was great at the time and I believe it transferred to the pitch. It was always that we found ways to entertain ourselves inside the hotel, rather than succumbing to the temptation of looking for pleasures outside, which could land us in a heap of trouble. The gambling got so much that some players would sneak out of the hotel to find an ATM in the middle of the night, just so they could continue playing. It was crazy. The coaches obviously didn’t know what we were up to, but these games helped build team spirit. After the game we would make jokes about who won or who lost the most money and whether there would be a rematch in someone else’s hotel room the following week. Some coaches caught onto the shenanigans and others didn’t. But during the time Augusto Palacios was the coach, we didn’t dare try it. Palacios was very strict and I believe he still is. He would even decide who shared a hotel room with whom because he didn’t want two close buddies sharing in case they get up to no good. He was very professional, Palacios, on and off the field. He used to call us during the course of the day just to check up on you and during the night to see if you adhered to curfew. He stressed that, as a professional player, you have to sleep before 10pm to keep your body fresh. If he called you and found out you were still awake, then you were facing a fine the next day, even if he didn’t call you the night before a match. We didn’t even try to test him. We knew that we’d be toast if he caught us. We got away with our little gambling games when Ronald Mkhandawire, Viktor Bondarenko and Shuaibu Amodu were coaches. They didn’t care whether the players are sleeping or playing dice, but you obviously couldn’t go outside the team environment and go gallivant in the streets. This was not necessarily a reflection on their coaching personalities because each manager was different in style. For instance, I thrived under both Palacios and Bondarenko’s stewardship. I scored some good goals and played in some high profile games under Bondarenko. And we won cups for Pirates, which was great. Under Palacios, I got great pre-season help and preparation. I remember when I joined the national team in 1999 to play in the Cosafa Cup, Palacios prepared me for that tournament and I went into it feeling very fit.