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A “Stitch” in time! Another week, another set of hilarious anecdotes. And if last week is anything to go by, Soccer Laduma readers better brace themselves. Here we go again!

Sure, let’s do this. So, there was this time when someone in the team, at Black Leopards that is, brought this ash-like muti. For fear of reprisals, I won’t name names. As it were, the instruction was that we each dip a finger into this muti, lick said finger and then proceed to the field. Everyone did as told. Jabulani Ndebele, who was one of the players, put his finger in there, but before he went out to the field, the person who brought the muti said, “No, no, no, I think you should take this to the field and eat it on the field while playing.” So, he took the item with him. Yho, that boy was flying that day. He was on fire. He won the game for us. Then the muti man said, “You see, I am making you a better player. It’s not you, it’s my muti.”

Ha, ha, ha… credit where it’s due.

But you know what the funny thing is? The next time, he got the muti again and then he was told that he would be on fire again. Unfortunately that day, he was not at his best. Ndebele gave the ball away and the other team went on to score. So, after the game, the guy who gave him the muti said, “You ate that thing with a sour face, that’s why we lost”, ha, ha, ha. He was now blaming the player!

Maybe the muti guy had a point after all. If it had worked for the player in the previous game, then he should have taken it with a smile this time around. But go on, we’re sure there are other muti experiences to share…

Yes, ha, ha, ha. There were other moments where muti was involved. We used to go to this village in Venda. You know Venda is hot, right?

Of course.

When we approached that village, it was misty. That’s where we used to do the juju. Whenever we approached the village, the bus would park and then we would walk up the mountain to this other waterfall. We would find the juju man waiting for us there. To our surprise, he said everyone should get naked. We all looked at each other in confusion. Everyone had to strip naked and then there was this hole that we had to go inside of. They gave us a blanket each. Oh, I forgot to mention that we went there carrying milk and eggs. They took the milk and eggs and put them in a bucket. We had to bathe in that milk and eggs. Imagine everyone bathing in the same milk and eggs. From there, we went under the waterfall, and we were told it was to cleanse all the bad luck we had. We did everything they asked of us. It was on a Tuesday and we had a game on Friday. When we went to the game on Friday, they (opposition) gave us four. Can you imagine. We conceded four goals, ha, ha, ha.

Say you’re joking! After all the “trouble”?

We went through all of that trouble just to get hammered four. I can’t remember who we were playing against, but I just remember we got four. And then Thomas Madimba was like, “You see, this thing is not working. I think we should get another one because the one we are using is not the one.” When he said that, he was actually joking, but the team went out to Eswatini to get different muti. Then at around 22h00, they called us and said, “It’s time to bath.”

That late in the evening? Wow, crazy!

Yes, at 22h00. In fact, 22h00 was actually early. We used to wake up at around 01h00. Just imagine you are playing at 15h00 and you have to wake up at 01h00 – you would be so tired. So, after they brought in the muti man from Eswatini, they said, “Talk to the water.” They instructed us to tell the water what we wanted. Madimba asked the muti man what he should say and then the muti man said, “Tell the water you want goals.” You know what happened? They walloped us four again, ha, ha, ha.

Are you FOUR real? Ha, ha, ha. Yes. It was that season when Azwindini Maphaha and Postnett Omony conceded about 50 goals between them. They used to wallop us. This was when we were in the Premiership. It’s the season when we got relegated. That’s when things were tough. We were changing the muti men left, right and centre. Even during pre-season, we used to have the muti man traveling with us.

There was one muti man we went with to Tanzania during pre-season and we lost two games there. Then the team decided to leave him in Tanzania, ha, ha, ha.

No ways!

They were like, “He won’t help us in the league, so he must stay there.” We left him there.

Shame, the poor man had to fly back to South Africa by himself? Talk of a some-expenses-paid trip.

He had no choice. And we only knew about it afterwards. Just imagine.

Hectic.

We had Tintswalo Tshabalala in the team – that one used to annoy everyone. He did not stop talking. That’s the kind of person he was and still is. Whether you are happy or sad, he will keep talking. When you are angry, your mood changes when you see him because he is also so funny. When the chairman (David Thidiela) came into the dressing room angry after a defeat, Tshabalala would sweeten the him up and everybody would start laughing. The chairman would then say, “Next game I am giving you a bonus. If it was not for Tintswalo, I was not going to give you a bonus.” Whenever we had a problem with the chairman, we knew that Tshabalala was there, he would sort it out for us.

We’re interested to find out what it is that “Koppido” used to say to charm the chairman?

He would talk in Venda. I don’t know Venda, and the chairman would just relax and laugh. Then you would hear the chairman saying, “It’s okay, guys, I am sorry for shouting at you.” We knew that Tshabalala had that thing in him to sweeten up the chairman.

Ah, man, “Stitch” leaving us in stitches here… Ha, ha, ha. Thank you for the opportunity.