Early bird entries for Comrades closed

THOSE of you who follow the fortunes of the English Premier League may have noticed the passing of one of the England greats of the 1950s and 60s, Jackie Sewell, the former England, Notts County, Sheffield Wednesday, Aston Villa and Hull City striker, who died aged 89 last weekend.

His passing brought back for me some pleasant memories involving himself and me back in 1961, when he retired from the professional game and signed a contract to play for and coach the City of Lusaka club in Zambia.

I had signed amateur forms at that time to play for Salisbury City ( now Harare) in the newly formed Rhodesia & Nyasaland Football League (RNFL). The Salisbury City team was flown to Lusaka for one of the inaugural games, which resulted in a 2-2 draw and which was the first time Sewell and I met.

Sewell was a prolific goalscorer, having scored 104 goals in 193 appearances for Notts, which helped gain the club promotion from the Football League Third Division South in 1949/50.

But he was transferred to Sheffield Wednesday in 1951 for a fee of £34 500, a record that stood for seven years.

He made six appearances for England, scoring three goals, before taking up his post with City of Lusaka.

One of those three goals was in 1953 against Hungary in a game described as the “match of the century”, when England lost 6-3 to the Olympic champions, the “Marvellous Magyars”, before a sell-out crowd of 120 000 at Wembley.

Prior to that match, Hungary had been unbeaten for three years and England had never lost an international at Wembley.

Worse was to come a few months later in the return match in Budapest. Hungary won 7-1, inflicting the heaviest defeat ever on England.

Two weeks after the drawn game in Lusaka, Sewell and I were fated to meet again when we were both selected for the RNFL representative side to play two games at the Katanga Trade Fair in Elizabethville, the first against Katanga on the Saturday, the second against Brazzaville on the Sunday.

Sewell captained the side at inside-right, with me in my customary place out on the wing. The coach was none other than Durban favourite Topper Brown, the former Springbok goalkeeper.

This was a historic time because the country was in a transition from its former colonial state of the Belgian Congo to becoming the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Although the RNFL side easily won the first game against Katanga 7-2 in front of an estimated crowd of 20 000 the second game against Brazzaville was something else and we lost it 3-1.

That night a banquet was held presided over by the new Congolese president, Moise Tshombe, to whom we were individually introduced. The evening closed with an emotional singing of Auld Lang Syne. NETBALL SA has announced two teams for the Diamond Challenge quadrangular tournament to be played at the indoor sports centre at the University of KZN Durban-Westville campus starting tomorrow.

There are two changes in the Proteas team that played in the recent series with Australia, New Zealand and England, with Juline Rossouw and Vanes-Marie du Toit coming in for Rochelle Lawson and Jeannie Steyn. The opening games are: 4pm President’s 12 v Uganda; 6pm Spar Proteas v Zimbabwe. MORE than 8 300 South African athletes have taken up the early-bird entry fee offer of R420 since the entry process for next year’s Comrades Marathon opened a month ago.

The reduced entry fee offer for South Africans closed yesterday, with the regular price of R460 coming into effect from today until the entry process closes on November 30, or once the entry cap of 20 000 is reached.

CMA race director Rowyn James said: “It is pleasing to note that nearly half of our 2017 Comrades entry cap has already been taken up in the first month of the entry process.

“The entry process has been going very smoothly so far and we would like to urge our runners to enter as soon as possible to secure their place on the start line.”

Yesterday the entry tally stood at 9 230. View the latest entry barometer at the Comrades Marathon website at www.comrades.com.

The entry fees for the 2017 Comrades Marathon are as follows: local entries R460; rest of Africa R770; international R2 650

For details on how to enter, visit the Comrades website.

The 92nd Comrades Marathon will be the 47th up run. It will start at the Durban City Hall and finish at the Scottsville Racecourse on Sunday, June 4, 2017. – Sports Reporter