Trail of the Lion King

I’d thought that the football season in Africa had finished, but then I stumbled across the fixtures for the first round of qualifying for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations. South Africa didn’t feature, so I assume that they don‘t take part until later in the competition.

Jen and I didn’t have anything planned for the weekend and so I had a look  at neighbouring countries to see if there was a game that we could get to. Swaziland were playing away so that ruled them out. Lesotho had a home game, but the flights were a couple of hundred quid a pop and I thought that was a bit much for a game that didn’t involve the Boro.

Botswana were also playing at home, against Burundi, and as the flights were  a fair bit cheaper that’s what we went for. We booked a room for the Saturday night that was handy for the National Stadium in Gaborone and everything looked all set. Or at least it did until I discovered that the National Stadium had already been booked for the African Youth Games. Bloody kids.The national team’s qualifying match for the Africa Cup of Nations had been put back a day and shunted seventy kilometres out of town to the New Lobatse Sports Centre.

I wouldn’t care, but a similar thing happened last month to Botswana’s game with Swaziland after someone had booked the National Stadium for a car boot sale or something. You’d think that the country‘s football team would get first dibs.

National Stadium, Gaborone.

Still, at least there was something going on at the National Stadium. The African Youth Games appears to be quite a big deal, with fifty four countries represented by a couple of thousand participants. By the time we arrived on Saturday morning though, there were only a couple of athletics events to complete before the closing ceremony.

We couldn’t park near the stadium and were directed to a Park and Ride. The bus driver told us that it would be at least half an hour before the bus would set off and so as it was only a ten minute walk back to the stadium we left him to it.

The stadium looked fairly empty as we approached, with no one going in other than gangs of teenagers in matching tracksuits and accreditation around their necks. A security guard told us that the only way to get tickets was by finding a particular chain of supermarket and buying tickets there. As we weren’t too fussed about catching the under fifteens three thousand metre steeplechase we gave up and had a wander around the market that had been set up nearby instead.

The condom shop seemed popular.

I don’t think that many of the stall holders had made the killing from the games that they’d hoped for. Ticket sales to the public were poor and a couple of thousand teenagers on a trip away from home  are more likely to nick your stock than pay for it.

I couldn’t help but admire a suit that had a strip of animal hide running down the spine of the jacket with more skin decorating the front pockets. I knew that it wouldn’t fit and even if it did I’d struggle to find the right occasion to wear it to, but when the bloke selling it suggested that I try it on I didn’t need to be asked twice.

If only it had been made entirely of zebra hide, I’d never have taken it off again.

With a day to go until the Cup of Nations qualifier we had time to make sure that we had match tickets in advance and so we popped into Gaborone town centre. It seems a safe enough place, although we were targeted by one of those fellas selling paintings to fund a day care centre for one legged orphans. We’ll be able to open our own gallery one day.

I’d read that the match tickets were being sold at Orange shops and so once we’d found one it was easy enough to pick up a couple of fifty Pula seats for the shaded stand.

In case you’ve never seen a ticket before.

We’d booked into a backpacker’s hostel, mainly because it was right next door to the Mokolodi Game Reserve where we’d intended to track rhinos on foot. Unfortunately the rhino tracking was the last thing in my list of things to arrange and they were fully booked. As we were staying nearby we visited the reserve anyway and settled for a two hour game drive instead. We still didn’t see any rhinos.

There were a few giraffes though and as we were driven around I quietly dropped the raisins from my complimentary bag of nuts and raisins for the warthogs to eat.

That bush doesn’t provide much of a hiding place.

I noticed an advert in the paper the next day for some of the livestock on the reserve. It certainly beats your standard gift shop, although we’d have struggled to have got any of them on the plane back to Johannesburg.

They’ll even gift-wrap them for you.

The hostel was ok, mainly because we had the best room, one of those roundel things with a thatched roof. As well as having the only en-suite bathroom on the premises it came complete with peacocks and the fattest pig I’ve ever seen.

I can only hope she was heavily pregnant as dragging your stomach along the floor isn’t a good look. Despite that, we fed her more leftovers than I suspect is healthy.

Fattest pig ever.

Next morning we drove down to Lobatse. We’d planned to call in at some game reserve with vultures but couldn’t find it and so spent most of the morning driving around the town looking for the stadium before stretching out our lunch long enough to read every section in a couple of Sunday papers.

The upside of having not much to do was that we got to the New Lobatse Stadium early enough to get a prime parking space just outside of the turnstiles. The downside, however, was that we had almost two hours to wait until kick-off.

New Lobatse Stadium

We were in the only covered stand and were able to take our pick of the seats to the left of the central VIP section. It’s a nice enough ground in a modern sort of way, the best feature probably being the hills in the background.

Hills are always good.

As kick-off neared we were treated to a dance trio. They roped in someone who looked like a bigwig in the FA at some point and he added to the entertainment by playing air guitar on the stick that the bloke with the robes had been wearing.

You don’t get that at The Riverside.

By the time the game kicked off I’d estimate that there around five thousand fans in the stadium. As ever, they kept arriving throughout the first half and probably a bit beyond that. One of them had brought what looked like a full-sized stuffed zebra. Perhaps he’d picked it up from the Mokolodi Game Reserve.

The zebra arrives.

The standard certainly didn’t seem like an international match with plenty of tackles flying in early on that missed both ball and man. The game was finally balanced at nil-nil after the first leg and it stayed that way throughout the first half, with just the single shot troubling the away keeper.

A Botswana corner.

We had to leave at half time as the change of date meant that we’d have struggled to have caught our flight otherwise. Our quick getaway meant that we missed the Botswana goal that clinched their passage into the second round and a tie with Guinea-Bissau. Who? No, me neither.

If the National Stadium isn’t already booked for some kid’s birthday party we might very well head back and see how they get on in that one.

Saturday was Cup Final day, not just in England, but in South Africa too. Or rather it was Nedbank Cup Final day. I’ve no idea if Nedbank are an international bank, but if they are then they should open some branches in Scotland. I’m sure that they’d be very popular.

It’s a few weeks since I’ve seen a football game over here, what with the trip to the UK and then my kids coming over here for a visit. They’d have been happy to go to a match or two, but unfortunately none of the fixtures fell right. They did ok for wildlife stuff though.

I’m sure those sticks will be adequate.

There isn‘t a permanent venue for the Nedbank Cup Final and the South African FA wait until the finalists are known before announcing which ground will host the game. This year it was the Moses Mabhida stadium in Durban that got the nod. That worked out pretty well for Jen and I as we’d yet to get to that part of the country.

The Moses Mabhida Stadium.

I’d seen plenty of notices in the football paper giving details of overnight coach trips from Johannesburg for Pirates fans. I’m getting a bit old for that sort of thing though, maybe I’ve always been too old for it, and so we took a one hour flight to Durban instead.

Arriving by air allowed us to notice just how green the land around Durban is. It’s a bit of a contrast from the clay and rocks of the Gauteng area. It was a lot warmer than Gauteng too, or at least it seemed like it as we sat out in the hotel garden for lunch.

Our hotel was one of those near the stadium.

It promised to be an interesting final, with Wits University, or the Clever Boys as they are nicknamed, being good enough to have finished third in the Premier league, whilst ‘bigger club’ Orlando Pirates had already lost in three cup finals over the season, including the African Champions League.

I initially wasn’t really sure which team I favoured, either with heart or head. They appeared to be quite evenly matched on the field and my usual preference for the bigger club to come unstuck was balanced against the thought that no team should lose four finals in a season.

It remember how sickening it was when the Boro lost two finals in 1997 and then another the following March, but four in a season? No, you can’t have that.

It was probably the Pirates fans that clinched my temporary allegiance. I reckon that they would rival the Kaizer Chiefs nationally in terms of numbers, but they are streets ahead in the characters that they have turning up at the games. They’ve got that crossed-arm salute too, that even the players did before the game acknowledging their supporters.

A couple of Pirates fans.

I’d read that the 54,000 seater stadium had sold out, but fortunately we’d bought our sixty rand tickets a few days earlier. That’s around three and a half quid. Not bad for a cup final. I put more than that in the donations bucket at the recent Alan Hood Memorial Trophy final and that‘s for teams competing in the thirteenth tier of English football. I suspect that the tickets for the Arsenal v Hull game at Wembley will have been a little more expensive too.

There were plenty of empty seats as we went through the turnstiles with around half an hour to go to kick-off, but the stadium continued to fill up throughout the whole of the first half and beyond. By the end, there were only really the seats in front of the executive boxes that were empty, whilst in places people were sat in the aisles or stood blocking the exits.

The Moses Mabhida stadium is a newish ground, built for the World Cup and whilst it has a fancy arch that you can zipline from when there isn’t a game on, I wasn’t impressed with the distance between the pitch and the stands. It’s as if they planned for a running track, but then just didn’t bother. If you are going to build a football stadium, particularly for a World Cup, then just build a football stadium with the stands close to the pitch.

It’s an arch.

There weren’t many chances early on, with Wits taking the lead half an hour in. At that point the Pirates fans around us seemed to be expecting the worst. It wasn’t surprising really after the season that they’ve had.

I should have taken the camera with the zoom lens.

The Pirates coach is renounced for bollocking his players and on this occasion the half-time hairdryer treatment did the trick. Within eight minutes of the re-start Orlando were level and they quickly went on to add another couple of goals.

There was a collective sense of relief from the Pirates fans as their team ran out the clock whilst the Wits players took out their frustration in a series of scuffles.

Fourth time lucky.

The full time whistle sparked an entertaining pitch invasion as a couple of hundred fans celebrated victory by dodging the stewards and vaulting over the electronic advertising boards. As it is the world over, most of them couldn’t resist holding their arms out ‘airplane style’ as they weaved their way across the turf.

I think that probably brings the South African football season to a close for me. There are a few lower division play-off games still to take place but I don’t think that we will get to any of them. Still, it’s not long to the World Cup.

I haven’t bothered writing about Boro games previously, but with this now being a general sporting blog I thought, why not? The main reason that I record this stuff is to help me to remember what I’ve seen and whilst one Boro game does tend to blur into another these days, it can’t do any harm. There’s also a possibility that the photos could be interesting in twenty years time or so if blogs still exist then.

My son Tom and I drove to Middlesbrough and parked up near the University. It’s where we used to park when the games had much bigger crowds, but as we walked towards the stadium it occurred to me that we could have parked in any number of much closer places. It struck me how few people were making their way to the match. The crowd seemed to have dropped significantly since my last game in September 2013, much more so than the official attendance figures would suggest.

The busker was still at the underpass, despite the likely drop in his takings. Sometimes I give him money. It’s a karma thing, to try to buy us a result. This was a meaningless end of season game though and as a win wouldn’t have made much difference to anything, he got bugger all.

He probably did quite well ten years ago.

The lack of a crowd was just as noticeable at the stadium and we didn’t need to queue for tickets. We didn’t need to give names and addresses either when we bought them, which is a first, I think, since the move to the Riverside.

Tom’s been coming to the match with me, on and off, since his first game at Ayresome Park as a two year old. The attendances and the league position have gone full circle since those days in the early nineties with the glory years in between starting to feel like something that happened somewhere else.

Half past two.

Our seats were in the South Stand, just behind the Red Faction lads. They get a bit of stick from some of the older fans, but I think a lot of them forget just how low the average age in the Holgate was. The Red Faction drummer must have been practicing over the winter as he’s improved a lot. Or else he’d been replaced by someone who can play. Either way, any atmosphere at all in the ground came from that group of a hundred or so kids.

Barnsley on the attack.

There wasn’t much went on in the first half hour on the pitch. Barnsley needed the win to have a chance of staying up, but it was easy enough to see how they had ended up in the relegation area. The Boro weren’t much better in that opening thirty minutes but we managed to create a few chances as the half drew to a close.

Barnsley took an early lead after the re-start, but were soon pegged back. A couple of goals at the death gave Middlesbrough a win that was probably deserved, but of little consequence.

It’s strange, but the win didn’t mean much to me. It might have been because the season was already over, but I’ve a feeling that I just don’t care that much these days. There were too many players that I wouldn‘t recognise if they passed me in the street with their full kit on and that makes it harder to identify with them.

On the way out.

There was no need to try to beat the traffic as having to queue at the underpass is a distant memory, whilst the lack of congestion on the roads meant that we were back in Norton quicker than I can ever recall managing in the past. I suppose that there are certain advantages to end of season games in the Championship.

As you might have spotted from the team names, this one was a bit of a change from watching the likes of the Kaizer Chiefs and Mamelodi Sundowns. Jen and I were in the UK for Easter and I took the opportunity to watch a game between a couple of teams from the Wearside Combination League. Really? Yes really.

To be more precise, it was the final of the Alan Hood Memorial Trophy and that was pretty much the reason for my attendance. Alan was my Dad’s cousin and my godfather. He died in a car crash in 1987 and the Wearside Combination League re-named the former Blind Institute Cup in his memory.

Alan actually played in the first football match I ever went to. He was captaining Easington Colliery and his dad, my great-uncle Jim, took me along to watch. I reckon it will probably have been the 72-73 season, maybe 73-74. Anyway, Alan came over to talk to us as the teams were warming up and told me that the Vaseline on his eyebrows was to prevent him getting cut when head-butting the opposition players. I, of course, believed every word.

After he stopped playing he became a ref and went on to make the Football League list.  I remember watching him reffing reserve games at Ayresome Park and running the line in an old First Division game against Derby.

Alan as a boy, Uncle Jim is back right.

The venue for the final was the Boldon CA ground and so I took a drive up the A19 with my Dad and my son, Tom. There are two pitches, one of which is used by Northern League Jarrow Roofing and the other by Boldon Colliery Welfare of the Wearside League. This game was on the Boldon Colliery Welfare pitch, but it was still a step up from the places where these teams usually play.

Boldon CA.

The sign on the gate stated that it was £2.50 to get in, but it was charity donations into a bucket instead. The trophy was on display as we went in. It’s an impressive looking effort, but so it should be as it’s a full-size replica of the European Cup.

My Dad with the cup.

The setting didn’t really seem worthy of the trophy. You wouldn‘t expect to win the European Cup on a pitch full of dandelions where the grass was a good inch longer than it should have been. There were about forty people milling around when we arrived with the usual old blokes supplemented by friends and family of the players.

We’d got lucky in a way, with the top two teams in the Wearside Combination having made the final. Sunderland Hendon, who were presumably named to avoid any confusion with the Barnet-based Hendon that play in the Isthmian League, were taking on the equally precisely named Sunderland The Alexandra.

No Champions League theme music on this occasion.

Hendon were kitted out in a very Spanish looking red and white stripes with blue shorts combo with  The Alexandra sporting blue shirts and white shorts. The uneven pitch wasn’t the best surface for passing and so neither side really bothered, preferring just to lump the ball upfield at the earliest opportunity.

There was more squabbling than goalmouth action in the first half, with players turning on their team mates whenever a move broke down, Hendon were marginally the better side though and some dodgy defending from their opponents allowed them to go in at the break a couple of goals up.

A couple of those fans look familiar.

By the time the second half kicked off the crowd had grown to around two hundred. An early penalty to Hendon allowed them to increase their lead to three and it looked to be game over. The Alexandra players certainly thought so and started their post-mortem on the pitch rather than wait until they got to the pub.

Surprisingly, they stopped the arguing just long enough to pull a goal back and set up a frantic final twenty minutes. Being frantic generally isn’t enough though and it wasn’t sufficient to compensate for the panic that set in whenever one of them found themselves anywhere near the penalty box.

Championies.

Hendon hung on for the win and we watched them lift Alan’s trophy. I doubt any of them knew who he was or why he wore Vaseline on his eyebrows. We did, though.

Day two of the Pretoria weekend meant it was the Premier League game between Mamelodi Sundowns and Amatuks. We had a five and a half hour gap between being booted out of our hotel room and the mid-afternoon kick-off so we had a walk along to the Union Building to idle away some of the morning.

Even if you aren’t too familiar with Pretoria landmarks, you still might know the Union Building as it’s the place where Nelson Mandela lay in state last year. There’s not much more going for it though as you can’t go inside. We slogged up the hill, ran the gauntlet of tat sellers at the top and then made our way back down through the gardens. It killed an hour or so but I wouldn’t recommend it. Even the busload of Chinese tourists didn’t seem inclined to hang around.

It’s nothing special.

Fortunately we noticed the nearby Sheraton Hotel and were able to while away the remaining time reading their newspapers before going for the buffet lunch. It’s a lot more enjoyable than pressing your nose up against the glass doors of the Union Building.

The walk in to the stadium was a lot quieter than it had been the previous day and led me to believe that the Sundowns wouldn’t be attracting much of a crowd. The merchandising was more low–key too with most of the sellers setting out their wares on the ground rather than stalls.

It was better than the tat at the Union Building.

We made our way around to the ticket office where the bloke behind the counter kept us and the people behind us waiting as he criticised the appointment of David Moyes at Man United. I find it hard to have any sympathy for Man United fans. They’ve had it good for a long time and are long overdue a relatively fallow spell. Two forty rand tickets and a lecture later we headed for the East Stand, pausing to let the one of the branches of the Mamelodi Supporters Club march past.

They were happy to go the long way around.

The pitch looked in reasonable condition considering that there had been a game of rugby played on it just the day before and the ground staff had made a decent effort at removing or disguising the various sponsor logos that had been painted onto the grass.

Mamelodi, who were dressed up as Brazil, started the better of the two teams but looked vulnerable to being caught on the counter-attack.

View from the East Stand.

I’d estimate the crowd at about a couple of thousand, most of them being Sundowns supporters in the West Stand. There were a hundred or so of the kids who had marched past us before the game behind the goal to our right and maybe a dozen Amatuks fans at the front of the East. The away fans were supplemented by a few Kaizer Chiefs fans who had turned up to cheer on the opposition to their rivals.

Hat Of The Day.

As the first half drew to a close both teams had their chances. It was the Sundowns that broke the deadlock though, a minute before half-time when Laffor headed home unchallenged from five yards out.

Amatuk equalised just after the hour sparking wild celebrations from the alliance of their own and the Kaizer Chiefs fans.

Amtuks fans celebrate Nyondo’s goal.

The visiting supporters joy was short-lived as within a couple of minutes Mamelodi had regained the lead with the third headed goal of the game, this time a glancing effort from Mokoena.

That was it as far as the scoring went, although we were treated to a few wild tackles as the home side hung on for the victory.

This one caused a bit of an uproar.

As we left the ground alongside the Chiefs fans, we had to run the gauntlet for the second time that day, this time it was the Sundown’s under tens fan club making their presence felt and delighting in their victory. Whilst I’d expect the Chiefs to finish on top come the end of the season it was good to see the kids making the most of the win.

The last 32 round of the Nedbank Cup took place at the weekend. It’s the nearest thing in South African football to the Third Round of the FA Cup in England, I suppose, in as much as it’s the stage of the competition when the big boys from the PSL join the sixteen lower division sides that remain in the competition.

I’m not entirely sure what format the competition takes in the earlier rounds but the sixteen non-PSL sides were made up of eight from the First Division, six from the Second Division and two representatives of the fourth tier South African Breweries League.

I’d rather have watched a game with a fourth tier side in it but there wasn’t one anywhere near us and so it was Gauteng Second Division side AmaBEE’s home tie against top tier Bidvest Wits that we went along to.

Jen and I were staying at a lodge which was about an hours drive from the Sinaba Stadium at Daveyton where the game was taking place. We’d been for a hike that morning and spotted the best selection of wildlife that we’ve seen so far over here.

I’ve no idea what type of monkeys they were.

As well as the fairly common zebra and wildebeest and the somewhat less common warthog and blesbok, we got decent views of  monkeys doing monkey stuff and then got to within about twenty yards of some giraffe.

Incidentally we’d seen some lamps made of giraffe legs in a shop recently. I don’t think they would have fitted in a suitcase though and so we had to pass on them.

Eight lamps worth of giraffes.

After lunch we headed off to Daveyton. It’s not the roughest place we’ve driven through, but I still wouldn’t fancy being there after dark. AmaBEE, which is pronounced Ama Bee Eee Eee, in the style of Juninhee Ohh Ohh Ohh, normally play their games in the equally ropey Tembisa area. Unfortunately the stadium that they had planned to use was in demand for an ANC rally and there was only going to be one winner in that clash of bookings.

We arrived at the Sinaba Stadium an hour or so early and after parking as close to the turnstiles as we could without actually blocking them, we had a look at a match taking place on a pitch nearby. The standard wasn‘t very high, with no nets, linesman and the odd player in shorts or socks that didn’t match the rest of his team, but there were quite a few people taking a keen interest in the proceedings.

Similar pitch to the Baseball Ground.

The pitch that they were trying to play on might very well have been the worst I’ve ever seen outside of a kick-around in a car park full of pot-holes. I suspect that there had once been some grass in the vicinity, but it was long gone and the game was taking place on what now looked like a dried up lake. Not surprisingly we didn’t see any slide tackles.

They had a grandstand though.

Despite having plenty of time to spare we didn’t hang about for too long outside and soon made our way inside the Sinaba Stadium. I’d guess that it could accommodate around ten thousand fans in four separate concrete stands, once of which has a roof and a VIP section with actual seats. We only had the basic forty rand general admission tickets and so the best we could do was to find an area where the main stand roof provided a bit of shade for the cheap seats.

Entrance to the Sinaba Stadium.

By the time we got around to kick-off I’d estimate that there were close to two hundred people watching. Initially I thought most people were supporting the home side, but I eventually concluded that the majority were neutrals, happy to applaud a bit of skill or laugh at the errors made. The most animated that the crowd got was when one of the linesmen dropped his flag during a particularly vigorous bout of waving. I think that for a couple of the blokes near us that one incident will have justified the ticket price by itself.

The view from the main stand.

In the first half it was difficult to say which team was from the Premier League and which was from two divisions below. Bidvest had one player, Matthew Booth, who stood out from the rest of his team mates on account of being white, bald and around a foot taller than anyone else. He also looked around twice the age of the other players as he hung around at the back, a good five yards deeper than the opposing strikers, perhaps as a concession to his advancing years.

Eventually I twigged who it was that he reminded me of, it was the PE teacher that Brian Glover played in Kes. Although I think that Mr. Booth was probably imagining himself as Jack Charlton rather than Bobby.

Matthew Booth – Bidvest Wits.

Neither side managed a goal in the first half, the nearest that we got was a decent effort from AmaBEE striker Cele who steered his header onto the post just before the break. I nipped across to the other side of the stadium for sausage and chips and had to contend with a concerned woman in the tea hut who was so worried by my turning down of the accompanying salad that she invited me into the kiosk to check that I wasn’t soft in the head.

Rare view from inside the tea hut.

Bidvest Wits took the lead ten minutes into the second half when Getaneh managed a quite Bergkampesque turn inside the six yard box to throw off two defenders before poking the ball home. By this time the crowd had swelled to around four hundred and most seemed pleased by the goal regardless of which team had scored it.

Main stand from behind the goal.

AmaBEE weren’t ever out of it though, or at least they weren’t until the last minute of normal time when Langwe’s shot from the edge of the box sneaked in at the far post and clinched Bidvest Wit’s place in the last sixteen of the competition.

The final of the 2014 African Nations Championship took place in Cape Town on Saturday, following the third place play-off match in a double-header at the World Cup stadium. Whilst it’s a tournament that hasn’t really captured the interest of most football fans over here, it was a good enough reason for Jen and I to fly south for the weekend.

The day before the game we paid a visit to Robben Island, where we were given a tour by one of the former political prisoners.

I bet they didn’t leave that door open in the old days.

He was an interesting bloke and he talked warmly of his time on the island, perhaps understandably focusing on the camaraderie, the political discussions and the women’s tennis on the telly rather than the days spent breaking rocks and the nights in a cell shared with sixty other blokes.

I was extremely tempted to ask him if he had learned his lesson and behaved himself since he got released but managed to resist the urge. Sometimes it’s better not to blurt out everything that comes into your head.

Nelson Mandela’s cell.

The journey to and from the island took about forty five minutes each way. In addition to the seals and what looked like sea-snakes but might very well have been bits of rope or seaweed, we got a good view of the World Cup stadium with Table Mountain in the background.

I should have used the camera with the zoom lens.

The place that we were staying at was within walking distance of the stadium and so the next day we had a stroll along the seafront prior to the 5pm kick –off of the third place play-off between Zimbabwe and Nigeria. It was all very picturesque and I got the impression that the area down by the beach was one of the safest areas that we’ve been to so far in South Africa.

Hardly any murdering going on.

There were only a handful of fans around as we arrived at the turnstiles. In fact we were heavily outnumbered by stewards and security staff. We had no bags to search and so the only delay was being stopped to be given a whistle each by one of the tournament sponsors. Quite odd really as whistles are one of the few things that I’d quite happily have security confiscating on the way in.

It made a rare and pleasant change for me not to be driving after the game and so I headed straight for the beer stand and for a can of Castle at just over a quid. That’s how it should be. Take note UEFA, with your overpriced non-alcoholic Carlsberg at the European Championships.

There’s that mountain again.

We had seats in the main stand, just to the right of the media section. Our allocated seats were in row three, but as we didn’t fancy staring at the back of a dugout we sat a few rows higher up. It didn’t matter as I don’t think the attendance for that first game ever got above five thousand or so.

The standard of play was poor, although I suppose with the players being drawn exclusively from the Zimbabwean and Nigerian domestic leagues I shouldn’t have expected much more. I’ve no idea how many of the players feature in the regular national team, but it couldn’t have been many.

Zimbabwe started their time wasting early on, perhaps on the basis that taking the tie to penalties might have been their best option. Their antics got even worse though once they had one of their strikers sent off for an assassination attempt on the opposing keeper.

The view to the left.

The ref did his best to try to keep the game flowing but with Zimbabweans taking turns to writhe on the turf, he had his work cut out. He managed to reduce the delays by refusing to allow the physios on to the pitch, insisting instead that each player be stretchered off without any prior examination.

Effective as that move was with the outfield players, it didn’t work with the Zimbabwe goalie who took full advantage of his special status. Eventually, after four treatment sessions and a lengthy pause for lace re-tieing, a yellow card cured him.

The time wasting backfired on Zimbabwe as with just five minutes left one of the Nigerian fellas steered a header into the far corner to put his team ahead. The goal sparked a remarkable increase in urgency from Zimbabwe, but it was too late for them to do anything about it and third place in the tournament slipped away.

A goal up, it was Nigeria’s turn to waste some time.

We slipped away too, the lure of an evening out by the waterfront being a more tempting prospect than hanging on for the final. For those interested, Libya won the competition on penalties, after they and Ghana had played out one hundred and twenty minutes without a goal.

South Africa is hosting the 2014 African Nations Championships with all of the matches taking place in just three cities, Cape Town, Mangaung and Polokwane. We live about three hours drive from Polokwane and so that was the easiest option for us to see one of the group games.

We booked into a bed and breakfast place on a farm just outside of town. There was plenty of land to walk around although they didn’t seem to have much in the way of ‘big’ wildlife. Over the course of a couple of hours all we spotted was the arse of an antelope disappearing behind some bushes and a few stray porcupine needles.

The lack of large animals wasn’t a big deal though as I’m still at the stage where I find the small stuff fascinating. At one point we paused for a few minutes to watch a dung beetle being attacked by ants.

It’ll end in tears.

The beetle was stuck on its back and appeared to have had most of its underbelly eaten away. I know you aren’t supposed to interfere in these matters, circle of life and all of that, but I gave it a nudge to put it the right way up. Pointless really as although it could still crawl around it was bound to die before long.

A little later we spotted the largest grasshopper we’ve seen so far. I know it doesn’t rival the Big Five, but it was impressive nevertheless.

I wouldn’t fancy the ants chances with this fella.

Ok, football. The African Nations Championship is a different competition to the better known African Cup of Nations. The main difference is that only players who play in their countries home leagues can participate in the African Nations Championship.

The lack of overseas stars has meant that the tournament hasn’t really captured the imagination of the South African public. Maybe after the 2010 World Cup and the 2013 African Cup of Nations, it’s a bit of an anti-climax.

The tickets for the games have been on sale for a couple of months now and seem realistically priced. We paid the early bird price of fifty five rand for ours which compares very favourably with the prices charged by, say, Kaizer Chiefs for their PSL games.  In addition, we could watch a second game for free if we wanted. The other Group D game between Burundi and Mauritania was taking place in the same stadium at 8pm and admission covered both matches.

We arrived at the Peter Mokaba Stadium about half an hour before kick-off. We didn’t have parking tickets and so despite the main car parks being virtually empty we had to park on the nearby grass. As we passed through the turnstiles we had the tops of our Coke and water bottles confiscated. This happens at Boro games at The Riverside too although I’ve learned my lesson there and just take replacement caps with me. Maybe I’ll have to get into that habit over here too.

Peter Mokaba Stadium

Whilst the tickets were for allocated seats, nobody appeared to be taking any notice. We headed for the covered stand on the tunnel side just in case it started to rain. There were a group of Congo fans directly below us waving their flags and blowing vuvuzelas.

I don’t know too much about Congo as a country, except that there’s two of them and both countries had qualified for this tournament. Today’s team was the Democratic Republic of Congo, but I don’t know whether they are ‘Good Congo‘ or ‘Bad Congo‘. Perhaps neither of them are ‘Good Congo‘. Maybe ‘Bad Congo‘ and ‘Even Worse Congo‘ are more appropriate labels. I don’t know. For those of you who know your history, the Democratic Republic of Congo is the place formerly known as Zaire.

The DR Congo fans.

The Gabon fans were congregated over to our right. There were probably a few more of them, but maybe they hadn’t had so far to travel. Or perhaps they’ve had fewer civil wars to distract them from second-tier football tournaments. The rivalry between the supporters was friendly enough, although it always seems that way over here. Perhaps having the tops removed from their Coke bottles convinces everyone not to kick each others heads in.

The Gabon fans.

So, on to the game. Gabon were wearing Brazil strips which, as kits go, are generally regarded as being as cool as it gets. When they are worn by Brazil that is. When teams like Gabon or Crystal Palace wear them, then it just makes me smirk. Particularly when it’s Palace.

Congo out-cooled their opponents in the fashion stakes with a shirt based upon their sky blue with diagonal red stripe flag. Red shorts and blue socks completed their stylish look.

DR Congo – extra marks for the classic goalie kit.

Gabon opened the scoring in the second minute. Congo’s pony-tailed keeper had needlessly given away a corner with a theatrical tip around the post and when the ball was floated over Nguema headed his team into the lead.

Congo’s best chance in the half was squandered when some bloke ballooned a free-kick so far over the bar that I think even his Mam and Dad would have found it hard not to laugh.

I was a bit disappointed with the overall standard of play. There was too much first time hoofing and not enough occasions when someone would put his foot on the ball and have a think about what to do with it.

Congo on the attack.

At half time we had a wander through the concourse on the way to a change of seat. In the toilets someone had just restocked the supply of free condoms and I spotted a fella helping himself to a couple of dozen. I doubted that he’d be staying for the second game as I assumed that he had other plans.

The catering stall didn’t seem very popular, perhaps not surprisingly with the main dish being described as meat and pap. I don’t know about you but I prefer a description to be a little more specific than just ‘meat’.

Meat and pap.

Gabon opened up the second half with a couple of decent chances. The first of which gave the Congo goalie a chance to redeem himself when he got down well to thwart a shot from a quick break. This was soon followed by someone wasting a free header after being left unmarked at a corner.

View from the far corner.

As time went on I noticed a few new fans arriving in different colours, presumably supporters of Burundi or Mauritania. I’m not even sure that Mauritania is a real country. I’d always thought it was one of those places in fairy tales that always had a Crown Prince or where you went through passport control via the back of your wardrobe.

A bit more of the action.

The final throes of the game saw plenty of pressure from Congo as they tried to force an equaliser, countered by even more time-wasting by Gabon as they tried to run the clock down. They brought a chubby bald bloke on for the last few minutes who, as a consequence of his Brazil strip, bore  a certain resemblance to Fat Ronnie. Or at least he did until he got anywhere near the ball.

The vuvuzela didn’t seem to be appreciated by everyone.

The early goal turned out to be the only one of the game and the victory took Gabon to the top of the four-team table. A few days later both teams won their final group matches to progress to the quarter finals.

Football in the PSL and the National First Division takes a two to three week break over Christmas and New Year and as it is very difficult to find anything out about football games outside of the top two divisions I didn’t hold out much hope of getting to a match during that time. I kept on buying newspapers for the sports coverage though on the off-chance that there might be a brief mention of something going on somewhere and for once I got lucky.

One of the tabloids that tends to specialise in lurid accounts of vigilante action against just about everyone from suspected murderers to those who are late in returning their library books had a write-up in the sports section on the impending finals of three local tournaments. The nearest one to us was in Tembisa and so we headed over to the Makhulong Stadium for Finals Day of the Philly Games.

‘A Local Shop for Local People’

Tembisa is an area best described as dodgy. It’s sufficiently dodgy that I soon received a phone call from the company Security Manager who had been alerted by our tracking device to the possibility of us having been carjacked. I reassured him by mentioning that we were parked next to a Police car although I’m not convinced that my standard retort of “It’s ok, we are at a football match” gave him any additional comfort whatsoever.

Not quite a Zenith Data Systems Final queue at the Ticket Office.

There was a small tent next to the stadium selling tickets for the day’s events. General admission was thirty rand, but there were some VIP tickets available for one hundred rand a pop. I had no idea what the additional benefits would be but as it’s not often that we can be VIPs for less than six quid each we treated ourselves.

Even a hundred rand seemed cheap when I looked at the schedule for the day. To kick things off early in the afternoon we had the under fifteen and then the under seventeen finals. These games were followed by the adult mens third and fourth place play-off featuring Amasokolaar against a team called G-String. Yes, really.

The competitive matches were broken up with what I imagined would be a none too serious kickabout between a couple of ‘All-Star‘ teams of ageing former pros before the day concluded with the main event, the men’s final, in which Cheese FC were due to take on Amandla.

We didn’t plan on watching all of the games, not least because it would be dark by the time they had finished and there’s no way I’d want to be in Tembisa in the evening. Anyway, five matches back-to-back is too many even for me.

The VIP Section was somewhere in there.

I had a word with the fella on the gate as we went in and he reckoned that this annual tournament was the only time that the stadium was used these days. I was slightly surprised to hear this as I’d been under the impression that one of the First Division teams, Jomo Cosmos, played some of their fixtures there.

I’d also read that the Makhulong Stadium had been the location for one of the warm up fixtures prior to the 2010 World Cup. North Korea had taken on Nigeria in a game that was notable for a stampede by fans who had panicked at the prospect of the free-admission game filling up and closing its doors.

It was all a lot more leisurely on this occasion though with only a couple of hundred people dotted around the ground so early in proceedings.

The view from the far side.

We didn‘t bother initially with the bit where the VIPs go, but had a walk around to the opposite stand instead. There were a few stalls selling food and drink, some of which were well-stocked with bottles of spirits. I was driving so turned down the frequent offers of a whisky or rum, but it gave me an inkling  that it might all get lively as the day went on.

Where the posh people sit.

After a while we made our way across to the VIP section to watch the remainder of the Under-15 final. Our hundred rand tickets gave us the benefit of an indoor bar and separate outdoor seating. We could have taken chairs outside but we chose to just sit on the upper step of the terracing instead.

New Generation, in white, seemed to have much bigger players and scored a couple of early goals before Flamengo, in green, reduced the deficit just before half-time.

The outstanding footballer on the pitch was Flamengo‘s number ten who, despite being half the size of some of his opponents, had by far the best touch. Unfortunately his efforts were undermined by his centre halves who tended to toe-bop the ball as hard as they could in the general direction of ‘far away’.

A third goal from New Generation towards the end clinched victory and sparked dancing to suggest that their name had been chosen with one eye on boy-band careers.

And an action shot to finish.

We stayed long enough to watch the first half of the Under 17 final before making a move. The crowd had started to grow a bit and it seemed sensible to quit whilst we ahead. We chatted to a copper on the way out who was surprised, yet pleased, to see us there. It seems that very few people from out of town have much interest in the Philly Games.

We were equally surprised and pleased to see that our car was exactly where we’d left it.

I tend to get up early these days whether I’m at work or not and one of the benefits is seeing what’s happening on the terrace outside of our house. It‘s usually multi-coloured birds scrapping over seed but on this occasion it was the dassie making his rounds.

A dassie is a rock rabbit. As you might expect that’s a rabbit that lives in the rocks. Its closest relative in the animal world isn‘t the bog-standard rabbit though. No, apparently its closest animal relative is the elephant. Bizarre, but true. Or it‘s probably true, I didn’t check myself. And no more bizarre than elephants themselves I suppose. Dassies don’t have tusks but they do have vampire-like teeth, which is pretty much all I know about them apart from their favourite food is the roses on the terrace.

“Oi, leave that alone.”

Oh, and when they’ve eaten their fill, they like to sleep it off on the rocks above the back garden. Still, I dare say an elephant would have made more of a mess.

He’s looking rather pleased with life.

With the dassie excitement over for the day, we set off for the match. Orlando Pirates were taking on Golden Arrows at the Orlando Stadium in Johannesburg.

It’s a football ground with a bit of a history as it was the intended destination for the marchers in what ended up as the Soweto Uprising in 1976. It was also the venue for Walter Sisulu’s funeral in 1993 and somewhat more recently, but less impressively, a Black Eyed Peas concert in 2010.

It should have been an easy enough place to find but I’d mistakenly put the address in the sat nav of the nearby Dobsonville Stadium instead, home of the Maroko Swallows. Now that is a poor area. We’ll not be going to any games after dark at that ground.

With the correct address identified we were soon at the Orlando Stadium, although not before we had spotted a woman crossing the road with an oil drum on her head. She didn’t quite have the classic ‘no-handed’ technique mastered, although I suppose with something that size it wasn’t a bad effort nevertheless.

It’s like Ladies Day at Ascot.

The Pirates were in the lower half of the table due to them being a few games behind the rest of the clubs as a consequence of their cup commitments, whilst Golden Arrows were at the foot of the league as a consequence of them being fairly crap.

With the difference in class between the teams it didn’t take the hosts long to open the scoring and Happy Jele poked a loose ball home after the Arrows keeper failed to hang on to the initial shot.

One-Nil.

Somewhat surprisingly the visitors were level within a minute or so with one of their defenders heading an equaliser after a corner. The goal highlighted the presence of two away fans who had been fairly quiet up to that point. Mind you, there’s not much to shout about as an Arrows fan these days.

We had a drinks break midway through the first half. That seems a sensible and frequent occurrence over here. Unfortunately Golden Arrows lost a little concentration and Orlando broke quickly when play resumed. A cross into the box was sidefooted home from close range by Matthews Manyisa, a midfielder who if I had to describe him in a word, then that word would be ‘shortarse’.

View from the corner.

We switched seats for the second half and tried the view from the upper tier on the other side of the ground. The play was fairly open with both keepers making some decent saves and coping well with the ropey goalmouths.

Corner to Golden Arrows.

The crowd was announced as three thousand, which I thought was a little optimistic. Despite the poor attendance there was a singing section in each of the four sides of the ground and millinery sections in at least a couple of them.

Fancy hats are popular amongst the supporters here, although none of them quite rivalled the oil drum lady from earlier in the day.

Better than a baseball cap or a beanie.

Orlando were probably the better side in the second half but didn’t put the game to bed until the last minute when little Matty Manyisa ended any uncertainty with his second goal of the afternoon. The win enabled Orlando to continue their climb up the table and kept Golden Arrows in pole position for the drop to the First Division.

We headed back off home to see how many of the roses we had left.