Doc's friend zone

Eric September is someone I spent a lot of time with even before he eventually joined Kaizer Chiefs. We used to go to the same teaching college and this is when he was still at Jomo Cosmos. He then joined Mamelodi Sundowns and I remember him telling me, “Man, I want to play for Chiefs,” and I thought he was joking. I told him, “But you’re at Sundowns, the best team in the league at the moment.” He told me he wanted to play with me and enjoy scoring goals from my passes. The nex t thing I heard was that Eric had signed with Chiefs! He moved into the same complex I was staying in. If we were not training, Eric had goal posts, bibs, cones, balls and boots in his car boot. So, he’d come to me and we’d drive together. Whenever we saw a park, he’d stop and ask me to join him. He’d ask me to shadow mark him as he wanted to practice on his dribbling skills. I would also pass him the ball to finish in those small goalposts. That was the first time a teammate would invite me to do ex tra training. Sometimes we would go and run 10 or 15 laps. We spent a lot of time even off the field with the likes of the late Philemon “Chippa” Masinga, Edward Motale, Rudolf and many other guys. What a gentleman! I believe I was very fortunate because I’ve already mentioned a number of friends that were not from Chiefs here and I did that on purpose, to show people that even outside of Chiefs I had people who cared for me.