Sport Matters

Bring it back home . . . a competitor speeds past a homestead in the Sahel during the Dakar rally in Africa. The excitement the ongoing Africa Cup of Nations in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea has generated on the continent and the attention it is receiving overseas have reiterated the importance of Africa to host big sports event. From the football point of view Africa has really stepped up in recent years, hosting World Cup tournaments in Egypt (under-20), Nigeria (under-17) and South Africa (senior).   Morocco has been confirmed to host two world events in football and athletics in the next two years. Next year Morocco will become the first African country to host the annual Fifa Club World Cup, and also do so in 2014. Japan are the host again this year, after hosting the 2011 edition which was won by Barcelona who beat Brazilian champions Santos in the final match. Also in 2014 the north African of country will host the World Cup in athletics, a prestigious internat...

Big moment. . . Zebras of Botswana make their Africa Cup of Nations debut. Their captain Dispy Selolwane is first from left in the squatting row. After Mali confirmed last minute selection of Jomos Cosmos' defender Ousmane Berthe on Wednesday, South Africa's horror for not qualifying for the 2012 Africa Cup of Nation was hugely intensified. Cosmos are a struggling club in SA's premier league, PSL, and has been sitting at the bottom of the table for the entire first half programme of the league. However, Berthe is good enough for the Afcon, while Cosmos, PSL and the rest of the country are left pondering what had become of South African football. The pain of not being in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon will intensify tomorrow for SA when the Afcon kicks off. It is a great pity that after having his tactics exposed for their ineffectiveness during the qualifying tournament, SA's coach Pitso Mosimane chose the week of the big kickoff to blow his trumpet about his coach...

Brothers in arms. . . Dale Steyn, left, congratulates Limpopo homeboy Marchant de Lange for a job well done in his debut Test match for SA. Marula, Mopani and cricket. Clearly no link on face value. But a more determined probe points to rising talent from two Limpopo towns from the same district – Dale Steyn and very lately Marchant de Lange, from Phalaborwa and Tzaneen respectively. The two scenic tows are major centres in a largely rural Mopani District, in north-eastern Limpopo. The fertile region is better known for its rich agricultural yields than cricket prowess. But the two fast bowlers are about to change that, quickly. First off the mark was Dale Steyn, who ended the year 2011 as the No. Test bowler in the world, the status which was cemented by his top classes performance against the recent series against Australia and Sri Lanka. This is a great honour by any measure for a regional town, and Phalaborwans should be shouting from the top of all their Mopani and marula t...

PSL players Reneilwe Letsholonyane (left, Kaizer Chiefs) and Ayanda Gcaba (Free State Stars) put club rivalry aside to do it for new-look Bafana Bafana.   My last column on Bafana Bafana in December had raised hopes that South African football authorities would treat the start of 2012 as “Year Zero” – a year in which all previous successes and failures are forgotten in favour of approaching the affairs of the national affair with a new, positive attitude. How mistaken I and other commentators were as the football leaders welcomed the new year with the same destructive spirit that has reduced SA football to a laughing stock. By the end of 2011 plans had been secured to play three international friendlies with countries which would be participating in the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations. The first game was against Equatorial Guinea on January 6. But even before the national team could fly to the central African country, which will co-host the Afcon, the cancer that has eroded all ...

Legends. . . Zithulele Sinqe runs ahead of another roadrunning super star Willie Mtolo in 1986 Each time when I drive past ERPM in Boksburg, along the Rondebult Road, one name springs to mind: Ernest Seleke. The association comes from the memory of Seleke running in a vest with ERPM emblazoned across the chest area. Back then, in the 1980s, I did not even know that ERPM was an abbreviation for a mine, and that the initials stood for East Rand Propriety Mine. To me ERPM was Seleke, not the gold mine it actually was. Stock, as the lithe running machine was known, was a marvel to watch on TV during that time of my schooldays. However, he was not alone among the crop of SA runners who were nurtured and sponsored by the mines to excel in their sport – both on track and on the road – at that time. There were many products of the mines and parastatals but I can immediately single out Xolile Yawa, Matthew Temane, Gibeon Moshaba, Matthew Batswadi, Ben Choeu and much later Zithulele...

South African football must approach the coming year 2012 as YEAR ZERO. After a year when all that South African football had achieved since readmission in 1992 was kicked into oblivion, the game and all its stakeholders  –  from the fans to administrators, and from the players to government –  must approach 2012 as the year of laying a new foundation. The debate is on whether the old foundation was not solid enough or it ever existed. The year 1992 was our original YEAR ZERO as we were entering the global stage after exclusion through the apartheid regime. The excitement was overwhelming that we ran with the ball from the word go, hoping to catch up quickly on lost time. The initial success, of tying a friendly series with Cameroon, distracted us from doing the right things from very early on. Despite subsequent struggles in the qualifying tournaments for 1994 World Cup qualifiers and 1996 Africa Cup of Nations, South Africa remained cocky, hoping that money and ...

There is good and bad in Benni McCarthy’s altercation with Bidvest Wits’ players and staff after the Telkom Knockout final at Durban’s Moses Mabhida stadium last Saturday. Firstly, it was bad for him to remonstrate with his former Bafana Bafana teammate and now Wits assistant coach Eric Tinkler. Benni had raised Tinkler’s ire when he “trampled” on defender Sipho Mngomezulu. When he left the pitch when he was substituted with Pirates already 3-1, McCarthy made a disparaging gesture towards the Wits bench, apparently to taunt his ex-Bafana mate. Then at final whistle a victorious Benni boisterously threw expletives at Tinkler, and had to be restrained by Pirates’ staff. Even doubly bad was McCarthy’s rejection of the mandatory post-match handshake attempt by Wits striker Ryan Chapman. He alleged lashed out at Chapman, forgetting that the aspiring young striker is a homeboy from Cape Town, who grew up idolizing him at the height of his international career. He was on Chapmans’ c...