This year, Alex football has witnessed an increase in incidents of violence at matches perpetrated by soccer fans and players including coaches and club officials.
These coaches and club officials are the very people we entrust with our children. They are supposed to groom, mould and nurture them into responsible, well behaved and law abiding citizens, yet some of them are complicit in this unruly behaviour.
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Besides offering coaching on the various aspects of soccer such as passing, ball control and defending, a coach’s mandate is to teach aspiring young players to become responsible citizens and respect their fellow human beings.
Sport is based on a strict code of conduct and self-discipline on and off the pitch and it is on this premise that we encourage our children to play sport. This keeps them off the streets and away from mischief while at the same time they acquire valuable life skills. They learn about the dangers of a criminal life, substance abuse, early indulgence in sexual activity and teenage pregnancies.
With this in mind, I hope and trust that the powers that be in our township football will have the fortitude to take decisive steps needed to root out the rotten apples from the midst of our beautiful game. This so it can be enjoyed by all and sundry without the fear that violence will break out at matches and do harm to our beloved children.
I urge those powers not to sit on their laurels before this ugly phenomenon claims a life or lives.
But what is more disturbing about this soccer violence is that some mothers were also involved in the ugly scenes.
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I was taken aback at a recent match when it was the players’ mothers who were leading the chorus baying for the blood of the referee, and they were the ones saying namhlanje kuzofa umuntu (today someone will die).
And if it is members of our fairer sex leading the violent charge, it is all the more reason for the soccer administrators to take drastic action to stamp out this hooliganism in our game.
Good sportsmanship must prevail.
