Alex Royal Tigers’ not just a sports club but a movement

It is often said that out of a team of 11 players plus a couple of substitutes, only one or two players might make the break into playing professional football.

This is the narrative that has driven Alex Royal Tigers SC to adopt a deliberate strategy of developing a holistic human being as opposed to endeavouring to churn out perfect football stars who might not make the sport their living after their grassroots grooming.

Tigers’ chairperson Malesela Ngoasheng, who is a firm believer of this view, said it was not by accident that his club had adopted this kind of strategy in its endeavour to develop the township’s boys into productive adults.

“We’re not in the business of just developing soccer players but we’re in it to develop a holistic human being of various attributes, skills and conduct and hence we have attracted various role players in this task.

“In order to develop this holistic human being we’re talking about, we need the interventions of various stakeholders and institutions such as social workers, the community, family institutions, the church and various community organisations in order to achieve our goal,” Ngoasheng said.

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Ngoasheng, an attorney by profession, was speaking in an interview with Alex News after his address at an annual parents’ meeting and family workshop at the Love Reaching Community Church on the corner of 8th Avenue and Alfred Nzo Street.

Describing Alex Royal Tigers as not just a ‘mere football club but a movement’ that seeks to take its strength from the community and its institutions, Ngoasheng said Tigers also sought to take the boy child off the streets and away from mischief and other social ills such as alcohol, drugs, crime and gangsterism.

“We also encourage these boys to take their schoolwork seriously and have sessions with them at which we help them do their homework study and learn together, and beyond this, we’re teaching and grooming them to be better men.”

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Founder of Alex Royal Tigers, Thembinkosi ‘Tiger’ Matholengwe said Tigers was not just a sports club but a brand with a visionary outlook to life and existence on this earth.

“We are in the process of opening up a funeral insurance scheme that can enable parents to invest in the scheme so that when their loved one’s pass on, they can give them a decent send-off from this world.

“We already have three boys that we have sent for studies at Boston City College with the help of Maimane [Alfred Phiri, a former football legend of Bafana Bafana] and others are currently at Wits and UJ,” he added.

On the future of the club, Tiger said their management committee had devised a strategy in which it envisaged the promotion of the senior team from the LFA [Local Football Association] to the SAB League, and up the ladder to the Premier Soccer League and the continental soccer arena.

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