Myself and Marlin used to make a joke…
On why rugby is doing better than soccer in South Africa
I’m not a big fan of rugby or any other sport other than football, but we can’t take away the fact their success is due to the fact that they are running their sport exactly how it is supposed to be run. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same thing about football, which is really sad because we have more supporters than rugby. In football, from grassroots, nothing is run professionally and it seems as if we are getting left behind. It’s been going on for such a long time to a point that we can see that things are not going forward, they are getting worse. The process that I went through in order to become a professional player, it started with school football. We had school leagues where we used to play against each other and then get selected for the Western Province and from there we go to the interprovincial tournaments where all the school provinces would compete against each other. I was selected twice for those tournaments – the first one was in Bloemfontein and the second one was in Durban. From national team, selectors would select the South African U20 national team. If you select players that way, it gives you a bigger pool and variety of players to select from, but nowadays junior national team players are selected from the DStv Premiership, Motsepe Foundation Championship and the DStv Diski Challenge … and maybe here and there, you would get players selected from the ABC Motsepe League. And now, can you imagine how many players are still out there who have not been spotted or left out of the system? With interprovincial tournaments, it offered selectors (an opportunity) to see every province being represented. Those players were the best from their respective provinces and then you select a national team from there. But nowadays, that doesn’t happen. It’s either junior national team players get selected from the DDC, Motsepe Foundation and DStv Premiership. Motsepe Foundation Championship teams are also required to play with players who are U23 when we know that is not the development phase, that is a professional phase which is part of the PSL. Rugby have very good school leagues and we don’t and that is what separates the two sporting codes.
On getting excitement back to the national soccer team
The second issue is the fact there is excitement around national team matches. When our soccer national teams are playing, unlike rugby, there is no excitement. It’s just not there in our national teams because matches are not promoted the same way the rugby national team is promoted. If you look at how rugby is promoting their game, when the Springboks are playing, people go to work wearing their Springbok jerseys, and when you go around the shopping centres, you also get the same buzz. That puts them in that exciting feeling and mood that the national team will be playing. But unfortunately, that is not also the case when Bafana Bafana are playing. It was never the case during my time when I was playing as well. There was never any hype about Bafana Bafana playing.
The only thing that was good and done well was that we had a bus with our photos on it… and that’s it. There was nothing like CSI where we had to go to schools on a regular basis to promote the national team and give school kids an opportunity to see how we trained or even invite them to training. We never saw those kinds of things. If you want to create excitement around the national team or get an exposure, you have to market your sport. We used to do it once in a while, maybe for a specific event where we used to go somewhere to a feeding scheme and hand out food parcels, but it was never something that we did as a regular thing. Those things need to be planned well in advance because you know when the next game is. If we are playing on Saturday, the camp starts on Monday and on Wednesday and Thursday, you have to set out the afternoon to visit places and that is how you get people excited about the game and hyped up. There are also no adverts on social media telling you about Bafana Bafana’s upcoming games.
On ways to sort out school soccer
I remember there was a fight between SAFA and SASFA (South African Schools Football Association). SASFA was a mother body for school soccer and they thought they were higher than SAFA and I don’t know what happened. But those things need to be sorted out to make sure that there is a soccer league than runs smoothly in all the schools. I’m interested in doing a project like that in Mitchell’s Plain (Cape Town) where all the schools will have a league and national selectors will scout players and hopefully find players. I came through that process with Moneeb Josephs, Carlo Scott, Ricardo Katza, Peter Petersen and a few (other) ex-professionals, like Treswell Overmeyer. Those are all the players who came through that. Some school grounds are not even utilised. In Mitchell’s Plein, none of the schools have a decent football field and that is where SAFA needs to come and things will happen from there. If you are not going to do anything, then how do you expect things to change? Myself and Calvin Marlin used to make a joke when we used to go to UWC (University of the Western Cape) where Cape Town Spurs’ DDC team played their games. They have all the fields, but the only ones with floodlights are rugby fields. We used to make a joke that where there are rugby fields, there will always be lights. That shows how they look after their facilities to make sure they are in good condition and have everything that they need to succeed. But go around in Cape Town to all the soccer fields, they are not maintained properly unless the clubs are the ones looking after the facilities. And that is the difference between how rugby creates excitement and develops players compared to soccer.
Just like Dr. Motaung, Dr. Khoza has a funny side to him and people might think he is always serious, but that’s not always the case. I remember we were playing Confederation Cup in Saudi Arabia and we were seated in the foyer discussing life in general, as Bafana teammates. We were talking about marriage, raising your own family and looking after your loved ones, among other topics. We had just finished breakfast and just unwinding. The Chairman walked up and saw us. He said, “What’s going on? Are you guys planning a strike or what?” and we all burst into a huge laugh with him. We assured him all was well and told him about the topics of our discussion. You won’t believe the way the Chairman enjoyed engaging us on these topics. He taught us about the importance of a woman. What is a woman? We dropped our jaws listening to him telling us about the importance of having a woman next to you and he went on and on for more than an hour. We nearly missed lunch, listening to him and chilling in the foyer. He taught us a lot and I think we left that camp with a completely different perspective on life. We thought we knew everything until that eye-opening lesson from the Chairman and everything he said is still applicable to this day. We laughed a lot at some of the things he said because he was so smart that he mixed jokes with the serious stuff, so that he didn’t lose us. The Chairman is one of those people you can’t say no to because of everything he has done and you always feel indebted to them. You always wish you could do more to show your appreciation because people like the Chairman didn’t have to do the things they’ve done for us. He never saw me as a Chiefs player but a son. I really appreciate that.