The 29-year-old Kometsi graduated from the famous School of Excellence and had spells with Hellenic and Moroka Swallows in the PSL and also featured for Cetin Kaya in Cyprus.
He is still playing football, even though not at the highest level, and says, "You can take me out of football, but you can never take football out of me."
Let's talk muti first.
Yeah, I used muti and at Moroka Swallows that's where I saw that muti was used in football. At Hellenic, our coach Bruce Grobelaar would bring fish or chicken bones and put them at the entrance of the dressing room.
I remember one time we played against Kaizer Chiefs at Green Point Stadium and their players were very shocked to see bones at the doorway of the change room and they ended up going elsewhere to change! Then before the game our coach sent one of the players to smear polish at the goalposts and the crowd went crazy.
We won that game 2-1 and, who knows, maybe the bones and the polis worked for us, ha, ha. I also remember at Swallows we used to lose every time we played in Cape Town.
So one time after a game against Santos, Samuel 'Sea' Ngobeni came up to me and said, "Ndoda, do you know why we always lose in Cape Town?" I asked, "No, I don't know. Why?" He said, "The muti doesn't work if it's gone over the sea.
We mustn't fly next time, we must use the road." Ha, ha, ha, I just laughed at him! When I got to Cyprus, I was surprised to find the club officials burning something that looked like incense before the game. I thought muti was an African thing! They burnt the stuff on the table before we had our pre-match meal and, when I asked about it, they told me, "It's for good luck, it's for good luck!"
Sure.
I have a couple of stories for the Soccer-Laduma readers. First up...I was staying with this boy Lucky Motaung at Swallows. The one time we were watching the drama series Zone 14 and one of the characters, Tiger, told the other, Ntate Moloi, "I have a lot of skeletons in my cupboard." Lucky seemed so shocked that he said, "Yhoo! This guy must be very cruel. He says he has skeletons in his wardrobe!" Ha, ha, ha, he thought the guy meant he had real skeletons hidden in his wardrobe, ha, ha. He was so serious about it! My brother was also with us and we were just laughing at Lucky!
Ha, ha, ha!
The other story is about Joseph Makhanya in the national U23. We were going to play in France and while we were sitting around waiting for our flight, one of the guys took Joseph Makhanya's passport and hid it away. When we passed through the gates on our way to the flight, he looked for the passport, but couldn't find it. We all passed through the gates and left him there, as if we didn't know what was happening. Ha, ha, ha, he wanted to cry, and that's when one of the guys took it out and gave it to him. He was very relieved.
The one other time he forgot his luggage at Milpark when we went to play in Angola. He only remembered when we were at the airport that he had forgotten his luggage, with his boots and other stuff in it. There was no time for him to go back, so the team manager Barney Kujane told him the luggage would follow with the soccer balls and other stuff later. But, you know, these things take time. When it was time to play, Joseph had no boots! Barney then said, "Uyahlanya lo, we are going to find him some 'fong kong' boots around here in Angola." He went to a sport shop and bought the 'fong kong' boots and gave them to Joseph. To our surprise, he played the game of his life that day, ha, ha!
Please go on.
Mark McVeigh was another character. Soccer-Laduma is a family newspaper, so some of the stuff he used to do I cannot mention. I remember one time we played a friendly game against First Division side City Pillars. There was this boy from the opposition team who kept on telling Mark, "You are playing s**t! You don't deserve to be playing in the PSL." Then after ignoring him for a while, Mark told him, "After the game, come and wash my BMW convertible. It's parked there outside." Ha, ha, ha! I'm sure that flattened the boy's ego a bit and made him realise he hadn't really made it. Those were the days, man. Then there was Pitso Lekone.
I remember after one game he was so tired...he said to me, "Eish, this game dragged on and on...it must have been one hour and 30 minutes. Kunini sidlala!" (We played for a really long period). Then I said to him, "But one hour and 30 minutes is 90 minutes, so what do you mean?" Ha, ha, ha, he didn't know what to say after that.
Ha, ha...
(Cuts) A while back I attended Katleho Loke's wedding. After the wedding, I was with the likes of Vuyo Mere and Lerato Chabangu, just chatting. We were talking about American business magnate Donald Trump. So Chabangu asked, "Who's that?" and one of the guys said, "Where do you come from? How come you don't know Donald Trump?" I then said, "Ag, Chabangu comes from Mars!" Ha, ha, ha, guess what Chabangu said? He said, "Which country is that?" Ha, ha, we all had a good laugh at him. First he didn't know Donald Trump and, to top it off, he didn't know that Mars is a planet and not a country! Ha, ha, I know he will kill me after reading this, but no problem, I'll just run to planet Mars so he doesn't find me. Cheers!
Tavern of Legends Fun Facts:
Best player I've ever faced: Jabu Pule (now Mahlangu)
Best player I've played with: Mohammed Ouseb
Biggest pay cheque: No comment
Smallest pay cheque: R1 500
Former team that used the most muti: Moroka Swallows
Favourite current player: Andile Jali
Current occupation: Driefontein FC (Castle League) player-coach
Former teams:Hellenic, Moroka Swallows, Cetin Kaya (Cyprus), University of Pretoria, Witbank Spurs
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