As we were driving north towards the Jeppes Reef border post between Swaziland and South Africa I noticed a match taking place in the field to our right. There were signs for Mkhuzweni High School and so I presume the pitch was something to do with that. We had plenty of time and so I thought I’d stop for a look.
View from behind the goal.
My yardstick as to whether something is a proper game rather than a kickabout is whether there are linesmen or not. This one had them, but the grass down one side of the pitch was so long that you could only see that particular fella from the knees up.
Note the length of the grass behind them.
The subs and coaches were sheltering under separate trees and after taking a few photos I wandered over to have a word. One bloke introduced himself as the boss of Superstars, the team in the red. He went on to clarify that he was the owner of the team, not just the manager and then tried to tap me up for sponsorship. One thousand, five hundred rand would buy ten pairs of boots. Maybe one of the players already had a pair.
Superstars dugout.
I noticed that one of his subs was in bare feet and so gave him the hundred and fifty rand that would apparently buy him a pair. There weren’t many spectators, but maybe they had been on the receiving end of ‘sponsorship‘ requests in the past. One fella was sat in the back of his pick up, but everyone else could very well have been with the teams.
The main stand.
It seemed that the boss of the Superstars had been paying more attention to his business development duties than the activities on the pitch as whilst he was able to tell me that the opposition were the Hungry Lions, he wasn’t sure what the score was. Oh, well.
View from the side.
With a few hours drive ahead of us, we took the opportunity to move on fairly sharpish before my wallet got any lighter.
Tags: Swaziland, Swaziland football
Trail of the Lion King 
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