Bafana have bad memories of Ponte Noire pitch

THE sight of Congo in South Africa’s 2015 African Nations Cup qualification group in the place of disqualified Rwanda will have been greeted with little enthusiasm by Shakes Mashaba and his technical team, though SA’s record in Ponte Noire is good. After Rwanda were disqualified for fielding a player with two identities, gone is a comfortable trip to Kigali for a game Bafana would have been relatively confident of winning.

Looming into view is a trip to infamous Ponte Noire, scene of one notorious visit by Bafana for a World Cup qualifier in 1997 which they lost 2-0.

Former Bafana defender Mark Fish gave a taste of that visit a couple of years ago. He said the players would have to front-up mentally to the challenge.

“The day before the game we pitched up at the stadium to train, and there were soldiers with machine guns who blocked our path on the field,” Fish said at the time.

“One soldier cocked his gun and said in French we had better not go onto the field. This was ridiculous of course, as Fi- fa statutes state that both teams can train on the match pitch the day before the game.

“Anyway, Dr [Irvin] Khoza was with us there as part of the Safa delegation and he went up to this guy, pushed him out of the way and told us to get on with it. It was a very brave move!

“The game itself was brutal. I went off after I had my head opened up twice and also got a black eye. They were over-the- top physical and on that pitch, with that crowd, and the soldiers back with their machine guns lining the field, it was one of the most intimidating atmospheres imaginable. It’s a match I will remember to my dying day.”

Not much would have changed in the intervening 17 years and those kinds of dirty tricks are likely to be repeated for Bafana on this occasion. It will be as much a mental test for the players as a battle of ability on the pitch.

But South Africa’s record in Ponte Noire is actually quite good – apart from that defeat they have two wins and a draw in their other three visits, all in qualification matches.

The last was in 2007 when Sibusiso Zuma scored as they played to a 1-1 draw on their way to the Nations Cup finals in Ghana the following year.

It is now an artificial pitch. Congo have lost only once there since 2001, though that is a skewed statistic – they did move away from the venue for a while to play in Brazzaville.

Overall South Africa have met Congo on eight occasions and have four wins, three draws and that single defeat.

South Africa will travel to Congo on the weekend of October 10 and 11 and host their opponents a few days later on October 15.