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“Bruce was a naughty guy, hey.”

Alfred Moatlhodi got his big breakthrough to professional football when he joined Bloemfontein Celtic in 1998, after passing a trial. He played there for a number of years, before moving to Hellenic. Retirement happened in 2009, according to him, and it was not particularly on his own terms. “I had a fallout with our coach at the time. Age was also no longer on my side, so I decided the best option was to go and look for a job,” he remembers.

Greetings to you, Alfred. Those born after the ushering in of the new millennium will know little or even nothing about you. Tell us about how the start of your career came about…

So, Bloemfontein Celtic were having trials, so I decided to go and try my luck. Out of about six goalkeepers, they chose me and another guy. I was still young at the time and you can imagine my excitement at the opportunity of turning out for a professional side. Upon my arrival, I found that the team was run very well and everything was on point, including the accommodation. I couldn’t believe that I was now wearing the club’s merchandise and playing alongside established guys like Simon Gopane and Willem Vries. I didn’t know my way around at the club back then, but the guys treated me well and I have to make special mention of Gopane, who took me under his wing and saw to it that I matured quickly. He taught me how to handle myself in a professional manner on and off the field. He welcomed me very well into the team, since he was also a goalkeeper. I looked up to him and, on the back of my mind, I wanted to one day be the number one goalkeeper at Celtic. Because of his experience, having played for Bafana Bafana, he showed me the ropes and I was very grateful for that. He was encouraging me every step of the way and kept telling me, “One day you’re going to play and, when you do, grab that opportunity and make use of it.”

Sure…

I remember one time we were playing the last game of the season, although I can’t remember who the opposition was, and he told me, “You know what, I’m going to tell the coach to give you a chance to play tomorrow.” Yho, I was so, so scared, bro, ha, ha, ha. I kept tossing and turning the whole night! As it turns out, I didn’t play and he decided to play the whole game after having seen how frightened I seemed to be. Well, my debut did come, and it was against Manning Rangers. We led 4-0 and then they went on to score four of their own. I was introduced with 20 minutes remaining on the clock and I didn’t concede as we hung on for the 4-4 draw. That was a dream come true for me. Those were the days, man!

Indeed. Let’s get to more of the lighthearted stuff now.

My roommate in camp was Tekano ‘Shoes’ Ledimo and sometime Mgidi ‘Zane’ Maji. Ledimo was a very quiet guy – he would enter the room and not say a word for min- utes on enend. Hee wouldwou justust sitst on hiss bed, e watch TV, go eat supper and then come back and sleep. I also stayed with him in a flat and he was the same outside of football as he was in camp. Maji was no different. I guess birds of the same feather flock together, because I was not the most talkative of the lot, unless I was on the field organising my defence and giving them a piece of my mind. The biggest character in the team was a guy named Joseph Mokgatla – he was the loudest of them all and enjoyed making jokes. You always found people laughing in his company. Innocent Mayoyo joined us quite late into one season and he could also liven up the environment with his sense of humour. Any funny stuff to share with us? I remember one time at Hellenic, we were in camp preparing for a game against Kaizer Chiefs at Royal Bafokeng Stadium. Usually, every morning of the game, we would have a team talk where the coach would announce thete startingstartng XI andan tellte us about a out the tactics and stuff. At the time, our coach was Bruce Grobbelaar and his assistant was Neven Payne. We went to the conference room and waited for the coach, but he was nowhere to be found. So, we asked the assistant coach, “Where is the coach?” He

answered, “The coach is drunk and is sleeping as we speak. He just returned from somewhere at around 05h00!” Ha, ha, ha, we couldn’t stop laughing. He didn’t attend the pre-match meeting and we only saw him as we were leaving foror tthee stadium.staum Ass soon as hee appeared, appeare he said, “Here I am!” Ha, ha, ha. Bruce was a naughty guy, hey. He always enjoyed cracking jokes with the players and we used to call him Zinedine Zidane because of his bald head.

What about the players? Who was the funniest among you guys?

Vuyo Mere and Albert Kometsi were characters in their own right, not forgetting Gareth Ormshaw. Those three guys made making others laugh a fashionable exercise. There was also Shaheem Bobbs in the mix. Whenever we were travelling long distances by kombi, we would be laughing all the way because those guys just made it a point to entertain us. For me, Cape Town was different because back in Bloemfontein, I used to communicate mostly in Sotho, but now I had to get used to Afrikaans and English. When I arrived there, the first people I met were Kometsi and Mere, and they welcomed me like I was a long-lost cousin of theirs. I must say that the professionalism at Hellenic was on another level and you found everything you needed at the academy, where I stayed for a month before they found me a place that t they rented for me. When I moved in, I only had to bring my clothes, as the furniture was already there. Even the pitches we used to train on were always in pristine condition. G Great! Let me tell you another funny one from Hellenic. We once played Chiefs and the coach was still Grobbelaar. Do you know what he did? He picked up the bones that people throw away after eating out at KFC and then w went to the Green Point Stadium, where the match was going to take place. He stood at the entrance of Chiefs’ dressing room and scattered the bones all over the place there. When the Chiefs guys arrived, they got the scare of their lives and were hesitant to enter. They threw water over the bones, thinking it was some muti. Yho, people were laughing and we were also laughing because we were watching them from our own dressing room. They ended up getting kitted out in the corridor and went straight to the field afterwards. Even at Celtic, we did use muti, especially goalkeepers. They made sure to give you “something” so that the opposition wouldn’t score. I can’t really tell if those rituals worked to our advantage because you’d do them and then still the opposition would hammer you. I didn’t believe in the practice, but I wanted to play, so… Sometime later, you decided to call it quits. Yeah, Zoran Pesic made me retire. He was racist! One day we were playing in Johannesburg and then we came back to Cape Town and had a meeting. After the meeting, he was telling us that he was going to make sure we were not going to get paid at month-end because we didn’t want to play. There was more that he said that I can’t share because it’s so sensitive. But I enjoyed a decent career and played for a couple of years. I played with players like Ace Gulwa… I mean, you just had to enjoy watching that guy play football. He was the best there ever was and the great thing is that he always played his heart out. The way he glided past defenders was marvellous. Well, these days I’m playing for the Vryburg Masters because there are ex-professional players here, like Thapelo Yawa and Edwin Setae. Alfred, thank you for providing us a window into some of the happenings of an era gone by. It’s been fun. Thank you very much for recognising me. I thought you guys had forgotten about me, ha, ha, ha.

“They threw water over the bones…”