As we welcome you back for the penultimate instalment, let’s continue rolling back the years, brother. It’s interesting to note that you were one of those players who went to ask questions from the coach, as you did with the late Styles Phumo at Bloemfontein Celtic, when you weren’t playing and felt you deserved to…
I fought him, I fought him a lot. There were times when I would not greet him because I could not understand why he put me on the bench, but at training, he would make me… You know, there were red bibs and green bibs, and if you were wearing the green bibs, it meant you were going to be part of the starting XI in the weekend’s game. So, I would be part of the green bibs at training, but during the game I would be on the bench. At least he would take me with when we went to Cape Town and I was happy because it meant if the team won, I would get a bonus, but that’s not what I wanted. I wanted to be inside the field of play. And sometimes the team would lose! I remember there was a time when the team lost three successive games, and I had to ask, “But why am I not playing?” There was a time when Ntate (Petrus) Molemela had to violently hit one of the supporters and it was showed live on TV. We were beaten by SuperSport (United) that day. Before that game, as a curtain-raiser, I was playing there for the B-team and I played well. Now you couldn’t fool Masokolara (the club’s supporters). They waited for the game to end and as soon as the final whistle went, they went there. They wanted the coach’s blood. But little did they know that it was not the coach’s decision not to field me and other players like Thapelo Liau and them. Those were the politics. But Styles had to manage his career and be as professional as possible, and I still respect him for telling me the real reason I wasn’t playing, as I detailed it in last week’s edition, because he could see that now I was angry.
Hmmm…
