Man on the move Tinkler has bigger targets for career
THE BOSS IS HERE: New SuperSport United coach Eric Tinkler arrives at the MultiChoice offices in Randburg, north of Johannesburg “SEE you in the final,” a shopkeeper at Birmingham’s Moor Street station said with a smile as he handed the change to a customer who had bought a copy of The Guardian for company on the 12:55 to London on Thursday.
The shopkeeper was Indian — a couple of generations removed — and his customer South African.
Much will need to happen if South Africa and India are to meet in the ICC Champions League final at The Oval next Sunday, some of it unprecedented.
But that wasn’t what was uppermost for the South African as he made his way to platform four: cricket could wait.
He passed a pair of policemen as he walked. They were, as they invariably seem to be in a country where Marikana might be mistaken for some kind of exotic tea, friendly. There are more friendly police about these days, visibly and consistently. Since last Saturday their numbers have been increased in the wake of three losers — even Donald Trump gets some things right — driving a van into pedestrians on London Bridge and then trying to stab as many people as they could.
Neither was that what the South African was most interested in as he stepped aboard the train. JUST over a decade later, Eric Tinkler admits that a decision that didn’t sit well with him then shaped him to be the coach that he is today.
“I go back to 2005 when I joined [Bidvest] Wits and they were relegated to the NFD [National First Division],” Tinkler said.
“I was asked to come in as a player and an assistant coach. Back then, already in my mind I wanted to be a head coach. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. I say fortunately now because that’s the truth.
“The fact that I came in as an assistant, got involved in the youth structure, moved on to [Orlando] Pirates and worked as an assistant coach to gain more experience before I became a head coach was all part and parcel of my growth.”
As part of looking to grow even further, Tinkler, 46, left the exciting project he had with Cape Town City to join SuperSport United on a threeyear contract from July 1.
United’s chief executive Stanley Matthews stopped short of describing the club’s union with Tinkler as a match made in heaven. Tinkler helped shape the Wits academy, and now he is part of a United side that has one of the best development structures in the country.
The former Bafana Bafana star has also done well on the African continent. He served as Roger de Sa’s assistant in Pirates’ march to the 2013 Caf Champions League final. Two years later, as head coach, Tinkler guided the Buccaneers to the Caf Confederation Cup final — a tournament United are currently
Instead, he flipped open his paper and read as much as he could about the general election that was happening all around him. By Friday morning, in the wake of the most decisive swing since Clement Attlee hit Winston Churchill for six in 1945, it was confirmed that the UK had chosen for itself a hung parliament.
The South African took a run along the south bank of the Thames and had to dodge a slew of playing in the group stage and will return with the team next year should they win the Nedbank Cup.
Tinkler arrives at United without his competency questioned, as was the case when he was promoted at Pirates and when he joined City.
“I stay away from that [comments of people who have doubted his pedigree in the past],” Tinkler said.
“I think that way too much attention is given to the media of late. That’s no disrespect, but with Twitter, Facebook, this and that. I was watching this Cape storm thing. Now,
The greater goal is to be recognised as a top SA football coach across the continent
individuals are becoming media people with their comments, videos, this and that. If you start believing all of that, it will drive you insane. I know what my targets and objectives are.”
For a “young coach”, a tag he does not like, Tinkler has quickly reached a number of his objectives — coaching a big team, building a club from scratch and shaping an academy.
“When I started at Wits [as head of development], there were no national team players. Within a space of two years, we had 23 national players,” he said. “The greater goal of all of this is to be recognised as a top SA football coach, across the continent of Africa and to be possibly recognised, going forward, in Europe. How do you do that? By winning things. That’s what I want to do here.” TV crews all pointing their cameras across the river at Big Ben and parliament, trying to make sense of it all for this nation and others far away.
Presently, they were chased under umbrellas by a shower of rain. Running and umbrellas don’t get along, so the South African got soaked as he chugged.
An umbrellaless woman taking shelter under the Vauxhall Bridge applauded, presumably, his determination. She looked like a Labour voter. And a cricket person. The Champions Trophy is a lesser spotted event. It’s not a World Cup or an Olympics in scale or importance, and happily so because that means it doesn’t snarl up traffic and take an age to spool to its climax. But even the Champions Trophy hopes if not to stop the world then to give it something else to think about for a while. This time, in the country that gave the world cricket, it has failed to do so because reality has not been a friend of ours.
The events of last Saturday, which only added to the shadow cast by two previous terrorist attacks in the space of three months, have robbed cricket of the privilege it might otherwise have enjoyed of allowing the public to suspend their disbelief in reality.