Chippa coach Sikhakhane red-hot favourite to win this season’s sack race
THE betting office is no longer accepting odds on who will be the first head coach to get an unwanted visit from that scythe-wielding rider of a pale horse in the coming domestic premiership season next month.
Almost all the amateur clairvoyants who have lazily gazed into their crystal balls over the past few weeks insist that coach Roger Sikhakhane is a dead man walking and has an ineluctable date with the Grim Reaper.
His itchy-fingered boss at Chippa United — club owner Siviwe ‘‘Chippa” Mpengesi — likes to fire coaches for sport and many believe Sikhakhane’s sacking could come even before the first kick of the ball in the new campaign. Ouch, talk about brutal!
Sikhakhane himself must surely know that long-term career planning is a foreign concept at United and it is not so much a matter of IF he is fired by his Eastern Cape employer but rather a case of WHEN he is given the sack by the notoriously trigger-happy soccer boss.
The hapless coach is now in his fifth spell as head coach and the selfsame Mpengesi has relieved him of his duties so many times that he surely no longer bothers to unpack his clothing from the old suitcase whenever he is hired by the club.
But he seems to have made peace with the unforgiving nature of his unpredictable job, if his utterances to Times Media a few days ago are anything to go by.
“In this job you can’t hold anything against anyone,” he said. ‘‘I know that Chippa was (negatively) influenced (when he fired him all those previous times) but sometimes you have to leave these things alone and move on.
“He kept paying me my salary even though he had fired me. He is very generous.”
I don’t know about you but this sounds wrong on many levels and Sikhakhane seems trapped like a deer in the headlights of a speeding car.
As crazy as this may sound, only Jomo Cosmos owner/coach Jomo Sono will be 100% free from the sack, while the rest of his colleagues know all too well that positive results are the only currency that ensures a peaceful night’s sleep.
Kinnah Phiri is another coach who will be well aware that he occupies an uncomfortably hot seat that inevitably burns the backside of whoever is brave enough to sit on it.
Phiri pulled Free State Stars out of the relegation dogfight last season at the death following five wins in six games to finish ninth on the Premier League table.
It was the kind of great escape that would have impressed Harry Houdini, but those heroics did not spark spontaneous applause from everybody.
That run of impressive results rubbed Moroka Swallows and AmaZulu up the wrong way and they felt strongly enough to voice their concerns to the Premier Soccer League and even the courts.
Those match-fixing allegations certainly blotted the copybook last season and soured Stars’ escape.
We still do not know what has become of that ‘‘matchfixing” investigation and many of us are starting to think there is a greater chance of seeing Santa Claus jogging down Rosebank’s Oxford Road naked than of the bloody thing reaching finalisation before the start of the season.
It remains to be seen if Stars management will have the stomach to back him up should he fail to pick up from where he left off last season and launch another amazing run. Such is football.
Polokwane City’s Kosta Papic and Golden Arrows’ Serame Letsoaka will also come under scrutiny when a league that has an amazingly high turnover of coaches finally gets under way.
Incredibly, Orlando Pirates mentor Eric Tinkler is also thought to be under the cosh and could find himself with his back against the wall if the Bucs’ season gets off to a wobbly start next month.
All the above sets things up nicely for another rollercoaster season in a league where coaches are something akin to an endangered species.
We can’t wait.