Howzit, Keegan? Your turn on “In Touch With…” this week. UNIVERSITY OF PRETORIA’S KEEGAN ALLAN

Thanks for the opportunity.

You haven’t had that long a career at a professional level up to this far, but surely you’ve had some interesting moments from your time at Mamelodi Sundowns and now at University of Pretoria.

Yeah, I have quite a few I can talk about from both Sundowns and Tuks. I’ve definitely had some interesting times. Before I start sharing any stories, I have to talk about how coach Mike Manzini and coach Surprise Moriri were always laughing. They could honestly sit the entire trip in the bus laughing or you could hear them from two fields away. It was always quite funny hearing them laugh. They would laugh so much, especially when they were together – wow!

Ha, ha, ha. Any idea what the two Downs legends would be laughing at?

I think they had a lot of inside jokes from their playing days that would get them to laugh, ha, ha, ha. So, you would just hear them laughing. But also, sometimes if we as the players made a funny mistake, like slipping or falling, the group and the coaches would laugh together. Quite often, the coaches would tease the players, but in a good way. Coach Surprise always helped lighten up the mood within the team. I enjoyed those times because it made the group bond stronger and more united because we laughed together.

So, it was one of those environments where coaches were able to have a good laugh with the players?

Yeah. You know how football players have this tendency of walking slowly? We can take our time when we walk. So, one day we were taking our time when we were walking from the change room to do our analysis. One of the members of the technical team took a video of us walking slowly. Yho, next thing we had a whole meeting about how we take too long to walk. It became a big thing about how we walk too slowly. This was when I was in the Diski Challenge team. They were asking us why we walked slowly, and no one really had an answer. What could we say? Ha, ha, ha. Coach Godfrey Sapula would sometimes get frustrated. If players did not do things right, he would show them the technique or how to cross the ball. He would do it immediately after a game. The players would get quite upset because there was a retired player showing them how to get the perfect technique in takkies.

So, he wouldn’t even give players a chance to rest after a game?

Yeah, he wanted to show them the real technique, ha, ha, ha.

Nice one, Godfather!

Whenever I got to spend time with the first team at Sundowns, I used to have a good laugh with Jody February and Reyaad Pieterse. Lyle Lakay was also a very funny guy. I always used to laugh about how they would argue. I remember how much Pieterse used to argue. It was the first team goalkeepers. They would argue a lot, but not angrily. They just used to mess around, but they were so loud, all of them. Yho, you could hear all the goalkeepers from across the room! That’s how loud they were whenever they were arguing. Pieterse was the one who would argue a lot, even over some small things, ha, ha, ha. Off the pitch, they are best friends, but they still argue. On the training pitch, they play together, but they still argue. So, I don’t know, ha, ha, ha. What was funny is just how they went about it. February just has a naughty face. Also, when I was at Sundowns, there was a guy who came on trial… I think he was from Gabon. When one of the coaches was trying to speak to him, he was speaking French, Italian, Spanish. I think he was speaking every single language at the same time. He just looked horrified, and he had no idea what was going on. He was very confused. I

won’t forget that moment.

Ha, ha, ha, that’s crazy. For a trialist, it seems he didn’t leave a good impression. Tell us more…

At Tuks, I have not had too many funny moments, but I’ve been told about muti stories. We have a player here who tells me a lot about muti stories. Every time I hear them, I can’t help but laugh and wonder what it’s like. It’s crazy sometimes. He was telling me that sometimes they would have to go stand under waterfalls and then this other time the witchdoctor was coming onto the field and making them practice shooting and doing all these training drills. So, yeah, I thought that was funny. I don’t know how I would react to muti in a team because it’s a difficult situation. But it’s a part of African football, but the hard part for me would be that I am a strong believer in Jesus Christ, my Lord and Saviour. But there’s a lot of funny stories that came from the guy in the team.

Since when do traditional doctors deal with training drills? Surely no one has heard that before…

I think the guys got fed up with that. Imagine one of the doctors or whoever does the muti starts telling you to do training drills. When he told me that, I was just laughing the entire time. Just imagine!

Thank you so much for your time, Keegs. Once again, thanks for the opportunity.