Counting unhatched chickens after Bucs win par for the course for country

LAVISH premature celebrations are all the rage in this part of the world and it wouldn’t surprise me if Irvin Khoza and his club, Orlando Pirates, are asked to participate in this uniquely South African phenomenon in the coming days.

Pirates certainly tick all the boxes of this cringeworthy exercise as their heroics on the football fields of the continent have triggered an outpouring of patriotic fervour that has whipped the nation’s soccer lovers into a delirious frenzy.

Life as we know it will never be the same again after the Bucs beat Egyptian powerhouses Al Ahly 5-3 on aggregate in Cairo to reach the final of the CAF Confederation Cup for the first time on Sunday night.

And with Pirates set to meet Tunisia club Etoile du Sahel in the two-leg final late next month, the people who gave us frenzied celebrations before the Springboks, the Proteas and even Bafana Bafana participated in major tournaments must be drooling at the prospect of adding coach Eric Tinkler’s charges to their list of infamy.

This is the kind of distraction Pirates can ill afford at this crucial final stage of the campaign after trudging through endless pitfalls along the way on the continent with very little fanfare.

Just ask Carlos Alberto Parreira about this bizarre South African practice and he will tell you just how perplexing the whole thing really is.

The Brazilian cut a bewildered figure as he watched the embarrassing Bafana grand ticker-tape parade in Sandton before the start of the Fifa World Cup in June 2010.

The then Bafana coach couldn’t fathom why the country was throwing a lavish party before the start of the bloody thing and why people were dancing in the streets as if we’d actually already won the trophy.

He was not happy his employers, the South African Football Association, agreed to the sponsor’s request to allow players to attend the parade just days before Bafana’s World Cup opening match against Mexico.

‘‘I have never seen something like this in my life,” the veteran mentor said at the time.

‘‘We do not need this two days before a big match. We have this (parade) now and in the afternoon, we have a meeting with the president (Jacob Zuma).

“But the point is, there’s a game on Friday. Where’s the football in all this?”

And oh, did I mention Bafana never made it out of the group stages of that World Cup and suffered the ignominy of becoming the first host nation to crash out in the opening stages of the event?

But Parreira’s misgivings have done very little to deter the organisers of these shindigs and the most recent was so embarrassing many of us didn’t know where to hide.

The Springboks were the guests of honour of the televised farewell bash in Montecasino and sheepish Bafana coach Ephraim “Shakes” Mashaba was dragged to the podium to wish his rugby counterparts good luck in a PR exercise that looked forced.

The beleaguered Bafana coach had the anguished look of a man who wished he was hundreds of kilometres from Montecasino as he took those steps across the stage.

It certainly did not help that his own team is not exactly setting the stage alight and he himself is under siege.

Anyway, Pirates’ participation in this continental tournament has been elevated to national status now and there is way too much at stake for the country as a whole.

Tinkler and his players should not even be part of plans to mobilise the nation into battle mode and ensuring that Orlando Stadium is packed to the rafters when Etoile du Sahel come to town in the first leg next month.

So should anyone have the guts to ask Khoza to avail his players for a sendoff before the final, he should have no problem asking them to find the lake closest to Sandton or Montecasino and jump into it.

Follow Ntloko on Twitter at @ntlokom.