BANYANA’S SECRET WEAPON
Desiree Ellis shares her goals
Strip! Take off your clothes and show them that you are a girl. That was an order from a father to his daughter. She had come off the bench in the second half of a football match to score the winning goal.
Dazzled by her skill, the boys demanded that Desiree Ellis prove that she was indeed a girl, hence the instruction from her father.
“I was flat-chested and really short,” recalls Ellis, coach of the national women’s soccer team Banyana Banyana, who she has taken to their first Women’s World Cup since the tournament’s inception in 1993.
Ellis didn’t bare it all, but the command was a clear demonstration of the extent her father was prepared to go to defend her honour.
“He was my biggest supporter, my late dad. He never got to see me play for the national team,” she says of Ernest Ellis, who died of cancer in 1988. “But I know he would have been very proud. With all the stereotyping going on back then — that girls should not play soccer — he stood by me.”
Ernest also stood alone when Desiree, the first born of four girls and one boy, played her first match.
“I have a picture of me playing my first game for Athlone Celtic. My father was the only fan that came to that game. When I scored the winner, he was so, so loud. They said: ‘Can your father come again?’”
Ellis is still very short, a female version of Baby Jake Matlala if you like.
Just like the late champion boxer, Ellis packs a lethal punch.
That was on display when she led
Banyana to the Council of Southern
African Football Associations women’s championship crown in Zimbabwe in 2017, a feat she repeated in Port Elizabeth in September.
“It is always difficult to retain the trophy. Yes, you don’t do things for awards and rewards, but when you get to the competition, you want to win it,” says Ellis, who also won the trophy in 2002 as a national team player.
Penalty lottery
Booking a berth for Banyana to France in June is the latest of her achievements.
Thousands of fans gathered at OR Tambo International Airport to salute the South African women who fell at the final hurdle against Nigeria in the Africa Women Cup of Nations. Banyana succumbed in a penalty lottery in Ghana last Saturday.
“You don’t realise the magnitude of what you’ve done until you get to the airport,” she says about the team’s return. “We saw the support on social media, but to come up at the airport and see those many people. Just imagine if we had won the tournament.”
Had family finances permitted, she would be garbed in a lawyer’s gown arguing in court today rather than shouting instructions in a tracksuit.
“I always wanted to be a lawyer. I never got an opportunity to study further. My sister got a bursary to do chartered accounting. I went straight out of school to work at OK Bazaars as a general clerk in the office. When the money came in you would be counting the money, putting it away and doing other admin work.”
Ellis is a founding member and the second skipper of Banyana. She was there when SA played their maiden match in international football.
It was May 30 1993. She was 30. She scored a hat-trick in a 14-0 victory against Swaziland.
Benni’s neighbourhood
Born in Heideveld 55 years ago, Ellis grew up in Hanover Park, the same neighbourhood that gave SA Benni McCarthy, the all-time top Bafana Bafana scorer.
The journey to captaining Banyana came at a cost. She lost her job.
“I was working at a meat market when we had to try out for the national team in 1993. I got to my boss and said: ‘Hey, I got this opportunity to go try out for the national team.’ He says: ‘Well, you have to decide whether you’re going or not.’ I was like, well, I’m going. I’m 30 years old. I’m dreaming of playing for the national team. Madiba got released from prison, here’s an opportunity for me to go play.
“I made spices for different kinds of polony … French polony, you know … and for biltong. I said: ‘Listen, how much do you need for this period?’ So I go and make the spices. I had this shelf in the storeroom that was full of spices, ready-made, and I said I’m going.
“Everything would have been OK. We travelled to camp for squad selection in a minibus. On the way back we got a puncture and I came back to work a day late. They fired me. They said I absconded.”
While she was working as 2010 World Cup ambassador, cancer struck her family again.
“This time it was my sister Erna. She passed on in 2010. She had cancer of the lungs but she didn’t even smoke.
“I remember I was going to the Spain-Germany game when it happened. Her hands were already cold before I left. My mom just said go.”
Does she have kids?
“I have many children but they are not mine,” she laughs. “All the kids that I coach are my children. As a coach I believe you cannot coach and not care. You’ve got to care.
“At the club that I used to be with, Cape Ladies, I felt it was important that I knew each and every parent and the circumstances at home.
“I know when you come to the field grumpy, you might not have had a plate of food to eat. People have pride. They don’t want to say things are tough.
“We would buy groceries for families through the club. My mom used to buy big jars of peanut butter and bread and put it in a container and we’d take it to the soccer field because many of the kids come straight from school to training.”
Such a strong community sense is how strong bonds are formed, when coach easily transforms into mother.
“There is one player who was in matric. She passed and she phoned me like after midnight. I said: ‘Have you phoned your parents?’ She said: ‘No, coach, I first phoned you.’
“It says something about the impact you make. If you don’t care as a coach you’re in the wrong profession.”
After the meat market she got another gig at an eatery establishment.
“I did some casual work at a shop that sold ready-made food. People would come in the evening and you’d sell them a pie or [they would] want food that you’d dish and weigh.”
Veteran journalist Mark Gleeson gave her a job to sort mail that came to KickOff magazine when he worked there.
“I got all these stacks of letters that I’m typing at R5 a letter. He says: ‘You don’t have to work all day.’ I’m like, ‘Haai, Mark, I have been out of work for three years, let me finish the whole day until five’. Then I go to the Touchline subscription department to wrap gifts until seven o’clock. Run to the taxi.
“Then I’d run home. It was crazy running through Hanover Park.”
When she lost her job and could not even afford to pay for boots, she had to tape over a hole in her Jomo Sono boots. Luckily a good Samaritan from a sports brand donated a pair of boots and clothing.
At one stage things were so tight that Ellis was afraid she would default on payments and lose her car and house.
“I had to minimise my spending. People don’t know the hardships that you as an individual go through. I kept all this from my mother.
“She would have said: ‘Desiree, what did you do? How could you do this?
Didn’t you think?’ You know how mothers are. To this day she doesn’t know. I kept it all away from her.
“When I was back on my feet again, my car was paid, I could pay off the bond and other things that I needed to pay.”
The pride in her voice is unmissable when she says: “My mom still lives in the house.”
Played in the street
Honing her talent came with playing with the boys. Marbles. Spinning tops.
“It wasn’t just football. We played in the street.”
She lifts her upper lip to show me. “I’ve a chipped tooth. One of the boys tackled me and I fell on the pavement. I took my tooth and ran inside to my grandmother. I left it and I ran back out to play soccer. We used to challenge different streets. We used to buy T-shirts at Pep Stores and write our names on the back.
“There is nothing like playing in the streets with the boys, nothing. Back in the day grannies used to look for lice in our hair and all. I’d say: ‘Not now. I’m going to play, the boys are waiting.’”
It must be hard not to feel quietly triumphant with Bafana Bafana out of sorts?
“I’m not on the inside to see what is going on,” she says diplomatically about the men’s team.
“I know that players don’t go to a game to deliberately lose it or play bad. I don’t know what the reason is.
“But coach Shakes [Mashaba, former Bafana coach] always used to say he likes working with the girls; they have a different kind of passion.”
Women’s soccer is making steady strides. The under-17 team qualified for the World Cup and now Banyana have followed suit. But the shortcomings are still glaring, though Ellis feels progress has been made.
“We have a big gap when it comes to international football. Back in the day when I played, we had one T-shirt. I still remember we had to wash it and hand it back.”
Back in her day players were paid R400 a game. How much do the women get paid now?
“I don’t know.”
What?
“I don’t discuss money matters with them.”
But you are the coach?
“I don’t get involved. That comes with the team manager.”
You’re playing me, Des.
“No I’m not. That is not my business. It’s not technical. I get involved with technical matters. The manager sits with the players and they discuss those things.”
And now for the World Cup …
“We’ve got to triple our efforts and make sure we get good opposition to play at the top level to prepare. The most important thing is going to be our physical conditioning.
“Our movement needs to be better off the ball. We need to lose the ball less because we give it away too cheaply.
“We’ve always been a team that can create, we consistently work on our finishing. As you saw, we had many different goal-scorers.”
“I believe everything that you want you’ve got to earn. No-one is entitled to anything.”
How will the girls describe you in 10 words?
“They’ll say I’m never happy … coach keeps shouting. They will say I’m a hard task master. It is just where I come from … hard work … because there is no substitute for that. What you put in, you get out. If you’re not passionate about something and it is just a job for you, you better just not do it. But they will say I care.”
That’s more than 10 words, but it’s fine, Des.
As a coach I believe you cannot coach and not care. You’ve got to care Banyana coach Desiree Ellis