Salutations to a stalwart of sport

Even before I started my journey as the sports writer at the Benoni City Times I had heard his name.

The name of a man so committed to developing and showcasing local sport that he quickly became synonymous with everything about Benoni and her sports people during the 1970s and 1980s.

The distinctive patch covering his left eye made him stand out on the sidelines of Benoni’s sports fields, while his witty and analytical regular golf column was a fitting tribute to his Scottish origins and to the rich heritage that that particular sport enjoys in Benoni to this day.

The columns and the articles that he meticulously wrote and placed in the BCT on a weekly basis are the truest measure of his talent with the pen (or typewriter in those days) and a remarkable reflection of the vast knowledge that he possessed on an array of local sports topics.

Nope, that isn’t me in the picture, that’s former Benoni City Times sports journalist Robert McBride – one of the finest gentlemen I never had the privilege to meet.

I chose to use his byline from the old days within this piece to pay homage to a man who I genuinely believe helped pave the way for numerous future sports reporters from this very newsroom to establish themselves within the sports fraternity here and beyond.

In 2013, when I told my father that I had been appointed as the new sports journalist for the City Times, he reminisced about the days when he played club cricket for Old Bens and how his game suddenly improved whenever he saw the man with the eye patch and camera standing on the boundary, in the hope that a good performance would see him feature in that week’s newspaper.

“Use his example, my boy, and you won’t go wrong,” my dad preached that night.

Karen Watts, current general manager of Caxton South and East Rand, was the Benoni City Times’s sales manager during some of Rob McBride’s time at the BCT and she told me how incredibly dedicated he was to his job.

She related how he would threaten her with all kinds of trouble if she did not arrange 10 pages of sports news a week for him.

“That man, all on his own, every week, could fill 10 pages of sport in the days when there were no computers, only typewriters,” she said.

“Everywhere you went in Benoni everybody was talking about Robert McBride — that’s how amazing he was.”

Another former colleague of Rob’s, Elize Bredenkamp (editor of the BCT from 1989 to 1991), also spoke fondly of her encounters with the man.

She described him as an amazing character, who was super diligent and hardworking.

“He earned a lot of respect as a sports journalist, and rightly so, he was a brilliant writer,” she said.

Her husband, Christo, was also a reporter at the BCT in the ’80s, and told me how Rob was a mentor to everyone in the newsroom at the time.

“He was an incredible old school professional who did everything to perfection,” he said.

“He was immensely popular among sportspeople and was damn good at his job.

“You would always be sure to see his green Triumph motorcar on the sidelines of any Benoni sporting event.”

Current editor Hilary Green has fond memories of the man, too, and described him as an extremely kind man who had a great love of sport and of people.

“He was a hardworking journalist who was loved by a lot of people in Benoni,” she said.

Benonians past and present recently shared their memories about Rob on the ”Benoni – Now and Then” Facebook page, with an abundance of kind words and praise the order of the day.

I sometimes wonder how different his career would have been had he been around in these days of digital websites and social media.

One thing is for sure, though: he would have been able to get more sport in than just 10 pages.

Cheers, Rob.

I sincerely hope that I can be just half the journalist and community man that you were.

LG