Portia’s exercise in how to alienate people

Ifelt pity for former Banyana star Portia Modise this week when she went on national radio and called out a player she felt she could easily replace if given half a chance.

In the interview she spoke of things she went through, some I also wrote about last week. She spoke of the hardships and the struggles she had to go through to become one of the country’s best footballers of all time.

What made me feel pity for her is that I could feel her anger. She feels she could have been a bigger player than she was had the odds not been so unfairly stacked against her from the outset. She is right. For a woman to make it in football in this country she has to be really good while we have over the years seen some male players who left us wondering how they even made it to the paid ranks.

But I think she lost the plot when she named Thamsanqa Gabuza as the player she felt wasn’t in her class. Her argument would have been strong enough had she said she was better than some players. The fact that she went on and pointed out Gabuza’s weaknesses further tainted her argument for me.

It ended up feeling like a personal attack on Gabuza and the entire Orlando Pirates team who believe the striker is good enough to don the famous black and white

Sibongiseni Gumbi

strip. When we ran the story on Phakaaathi’s online platform this week, it attracted varying opinions.

Most felt she was right in her criticism of Gabuza’s skills but were also not happy about the way she went about it. She was given the platform to talk about herself and her journey and she should have used it to highlight the struggles of women footballers but because she went on that tirade, it is all her interview will be remembered for. Her exercise was pointless and did very little for women’s football.

I learnt that Safa have gagged her and threatened her with legal action should she ever speak ill of them again and I think I now understand why. She has good ideas and opinions but she tends to let her emotions overshadow those.

On a more positive note, Safa vice-president Ria Ledwaba is on the road meeting with communities to address issues affecting women’s football at grassroots level and one hopes it bears fruit and leads to a better set-up. Speaking after meetings in Mpumalanga and Limpopo, she said people had asked about the selection criteria for the national women’s teams.

This is why I said last week that forming a women’s professional league would be the best thing to happen to our football because it will eliminate all these problems as the coaches will have a wider pool of players to select from and we can also have valid opinions because we would have watched the games and know which players deserve call-ups.

She is continuing with the meetings throughout the month of August and hopefully she will come out with some good ideas to take the game forward.