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CAPE UNITED’S GABRIEL NYONI (PART 2)

Gabriel, it’s good to have you with us for another week, brother. Last week, you left us with stomachaches because of all the laughing with stories, especially the one about you taking off your shorts while celebrating a goal and that of your former teammate who “made a mess of it” during a game… Ha, ha, ha. I’ve got a few more stories to share with you from the time I was playing in Zimbabwe, my brother.

That’s what we want to hear! Without wasting any further time, let’s get into it. We are waiting in anticipation.

Okay, so I have this very funny story from when I was playing at Highlanders. So, there was a time when we were having a pre-match meal. We were having our food, but everyone was struggling with the beef. That beef was so hard, my brother, ha, ha, ha. It was really hard, but nobody was saying anything. Everyone was quiet and we were just trying to eat it. The thing is when you are eating, you think you are the only one who has hard meat or maybe you think everyone is okay with it. The funny part, as we later got to find out, is that everyone was struggling with that meat. Then, after a while, one of the players in the team stood up and started complaining. He was like, “Guys, I think before this cow died, it was going to the gym.” Ha, ha, ha.

Ha, ha, ha. Is that how hard the meat was?

Ha, ha, ha, yes. The coaches and all the players were laughing for a good 10 minutes after he said that. Because that meat was so hard, my brother. So, the guy made us laugh by saying that the cow went to the gym before it died, ha, ha.

We’ve certainly never heard about cows going to the gym, even if these days, fans tend to call players they don’t rate that highly ‘cows’, ha, ha, ha. Judging by the stories you have shared from your time in Zimbabwe, there were hardly ever dull moments.

I have another one that makes me laugh whenever I think about it. So, this other time we were training and the baby mama of one of our teammates came with a policeman to training. I won’t mention the guy’s name. I think it was maintenance issues and all those kinds of things. So, as we were training, the guy saw that the baby mama was coming with a policeman, but we did not see them coming in. He had already seen the girl, so he just ran and jumped the fence, ha, ha.

Ha, ha, ha, talk about running away from trouble! So, he left training just like that? Without saying anything to anyone?

Ha, ha, ha. That guy jumped the fence and ran, my brother. Everyone was confused as to what was happening in that moment because we had just started warming up. We were not expecting that to happen. Later on, when everyone saw the article about what was happening, everyone started laughing. People laughed big time.

That’s crazy.

So, the following morning at training, we asked him where he went to after running. He just said he went straight home. The funny thing is that he ran away with his boots and everything that he had on during training. He went home just like that, ha, ha, ha. But he told us that they negotiated everything over the phone or something like that.

Ha, ha, ha, well, some things are better discussed over the phone…

That was a very funny moment because of how he just ran. Everyone just stopped what they were doing at training, because we thought the guy was going mad, ha, ha, ha. This was also when I was at Highlanders.

What a story!

There was a time when we were having a training session as normal and there was a guy who was late. Everyone knew that this guy was not able to speak English and our coach at the time was a Zambian. So, we as Zimbabweans could not hear the coach’s home language, so English was our way of communicating with him. When the player got to training, the coach asked him, “Where were you?” The guy wanted to explain that he was driving to training and the police stopped him along the way to training, which is what delayed him and made him late. But then it came out like this: “I came, I went, the police now, me, came.” He said things that no one could understand, ha, ha. Everyone laughed at him. We spent about 20 minutes doing nothing at training because we were all just laughing at what he had said to the coach. The coach ended up forgiving him for arriving late at training because he was not able to hear what the guy was trying to say to him. I can just remember how all the guys were laughing.

Ha, ha, ha. Thank you so much for your time. You had us laughing the entire time yet again with your anecdotes from Highlanders. Good luck going forward and we hope you can recover from your injury soon.

Thank you for the opportunity. It was great to share the stories with the Soccer Laduma readers.