Doc’s memory bank: There w as something new to learn from that man

You would find that some players would be running a bit late for training and they were scared to call the coach and talk to him about it. So, they would rather call and ask me to please relay the message to the coach. If there is a traffic issue, there is no way the players will be able to ‘escort’ themselves out of traffic, so they will be affected, especially if it is three or more players coming from the same direction. Coach Stuart would listen to that and ask me to relay the message to the players who were on time and let them know that we would delay training a bit. That understanding and believing in his players went a long way in strengthening the relationship between the coach and the players. He respected everyone and was always curious to learn about different cultures, which was a pleasure to see. He needed someone who would guide him on certain things that he didn’t understand and he was always willing to listen and learn. If, for an example, there was a bereavement in one of the players’ family, there are certain things that we do and I would explain those to him. We played a Soweto Derby against Orlando Pirates and I could tell that their plan was around closing Shabba down. Every time he had the ball, two players were always on top of him, closing him down and he would lose possession. In the second half, I told him, “Coach, Shabba is defending against us. Loss of possession means we are not getting anything from him, so let’s replace him with George Lebese.” He was like, “No ways! We can’t substitute Shabba, these supporters would kill us.” I tried to convince him again and he said, “Ok, go ahead and do the sub.” I stood up and made the sub, Shabba couldn’t believe his eyes when his jersey number was raised, as he was in the far corner. I signalled to him, “Come, boy! Come, boy!” and George went on and we beat Pirates with an assist from George. After the game, the coach was like, “Damn, Doc! You got it right boy, I owe you one, big time!” He took me to a nice restaurant in Hyde Park. That was the first celebration and that restaurant eventually became our spot our celebrations.