LettersOpinion

The young sports scribe who shaped great careers

The BEAT’s graphic designer Lesley Barnard dropped a dummy front page on my desk, with a montage of the forthcoming Christmas edition just a few days ago.

How time flies!

The BEAT’s graphic designer Lesley Barnard dropped a dummy front page on my desk, with a montage of the forthcoming Christmas edition just a few days ago.

What, is it really Christmas time already?

I even nudged Lesley to say so under oath, my foot!

If indeed it is the time of Yuletide already — and I have no reason to doubt Lesley’s information — then we have the responsibility to prepare you to watch out for the last edition of your
favourite read next Friday 14 December.

The BEAT shall be hitting the streets again on Friday 11 January, 2019.

With this in mind, we all should be travelling down memory lane, re-inventing the nostalgia of Christmases past.

If you go to www.diepos.co.za you should be able to peruse a regular column I write for Die Pos/The Post, called “The Other Side of Town”.

In the most recent column I committed to go on holiday in Pretoria, to guzzle whole pints of beer and also play the Chinaman’s game of numbers known as Fah-Fee.

More memories of Christmases past keep enriching my mind, as I slow down and try to remember the fun of the good ol’ days, of the steam-powered train journeys of years gone by.

One of those trips was organised for us children by the teaching personnel at Zibuthe Primary School, in the Pretoria township of Mabopane.

We screamed at the top of our voices as the steam train chugged its way from the platform at Pretoria railway station, headed towards seaside Durban.

Because our school was of IsiZulu medium of instruction, we were able to relate easily with youngsters based in the hillside coastal city’s township of KwaMashu.

Here we competed in street soccer with among others, Mlungisi, a ball juggler who used parts of the body such as the shoulder to showcase his incredible skills, that we never stopped singing
his praises on the journey back home.

A few years down the line, it was a pleasant surprise to see Professor Mlungisi Ngubane in the colours of professional teams such as Durban Bush Bucks and Zulu Royals.

In Mabopane I played as a defender for the local Eleven Experience, and was sent running around in circles by a striker whose name I could not remember at the time. He played for Mabopane Koreans.

In later years I was oh so proud when I was approached by the youngster — his name is Nick “Bazooka” Seshweni — together with his contemporaries like Meshack “Touch” Mokwebo, whom I linked up with Bra Veli Mahlangu at the now defunct Witbank Black Aces.

Therefore, I may have been an utter failure at right-back, but as a sports reporter I have personally helped shape the careers of some of the nation’s finest soccer players.

— The BEAT

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