Flying for the first time must have given you the creeps.

followed me, and that’s where I started to say if they can look for me after one game even though I didn’t play well, they saw something that I need to be serious about. That’s when I started to be serious. I ran away, they took me back and that is when I started to familiarise myself with professional football. But, to be honest with you, it was not an easy journey. You see, you have to familiarise yourself with camping. Some of us don’t even know how to wear shin pads. Some of the rules you don’t even know… you just know hore (that) if you score, you win.

Ha, ha, ha. But, with us, it was First Division, so I think it was the whole season without (boarding) a flight. There was the Inland Stream and the Coastal Stream. The first time I flew, I think it was when we were going to play AmaZulu in the play-offs after we qualified for the First Division. We flew from Johannesburg to Durban. That kind of experience, when you are coming from the villages, is scary. But, for us, it was easy because it was guys who hadn’t played professional football before. We were still amateurs by then. So, if we were on a flight, it meant that it was the first time for all of us. That’s why I’m saying it is very important to teach these boys exactly what they are going to bump into once they play professional football because challenges are there, but discipline and all these things are things that need to be nurtured from a young age. You can see the kind of players we have today… once you make it there, it’s like it’s you and your phone, Facebook and friends, and before you know it, your career is over and there’s no turning back. If you can look at the background of most of the players that are still playing professional football now from our time, you will find that somewhere, somehow, they were under the guidance of a development structure. That’s why they are still there. That’s the kind of discipline that needs to be instilled in a player. But you find that the player was, like in my case, lucky to break into the scene… how are you going to know these things? The coach thinks you know. You’ll get a coach who will put three cones and tell you to do this and that, in English. You don’t even know what he’s talking about! That is the problem