Football’s golden era

MANY football patrons will remember New Kingsmead, the stadium that stood at the same site where Moses Mabhida is now. New Kingsmead was built in 1961 and the original intention for this stadium was for it to be a multi-purpose venue encompassing cricket and football.

However due to the popularity of football from the early 1960s because of the rise of Durban City, Durban United and Addington, the field became the home of football in Natal as the province was called at the time.

This was also at a time when the foundations of professional football were being laid in South Africa. The National Football League gave rise to many high-quality clubs across all provinces with clubs such as Highlands Park, Rangers, Germiston Callies, Hellenic, Cape Town City and Port Elizabeth City to name a few, in addition to the Durban teams, creating a very tough and competitive league with football of the highest order being played week in and out.

The effect of this in Durban was that due to the high standards set by the local teams, invariably virtually every week there was a sell-out crowd of about 3000035000 spectators at New Kingsmead. Fans of all ages packed the stadium and the football was very exciting and entertaining to watch.

Growing up as a young footballer, for all the years I can remember curtain-raisers were always played before each professional game at the stadium. At least two or three games were played leading up to the main game, starting with the young kids and culminating with the senior reserve teams playing the main curtain-raiser.

Junior and amateur football in those days was played on the outer fields of New Kingsmead and it was every kid’s dream of one day playing on the “main”, which was short for “main stadium”.

My first experience of setting foot on the hallowed turf of the “main” was as a 10-year-old and I was only a ball boy. Running onto the field I was so mesmerised by the huge crowd that I tripped over my own feet while running on.

My imagination had been captured as a younger kid when with my uncle we would religiously attend every home game at the stadium, irrespective of who was playing. I dreamed of one day playing on that field and emulating my hero Greg Farrell and many others like Jim McManus and Jim Scott. There were so many top-class players in those days.

I am extremely fortunate to have grown up in an era when I had the honour and privilege to have been able to experience and be exposed to such a high standard of football over so many years as I was. It was truly a golden era of football.

The unfortunate thing though about that period of time was the huge cloud of apartheid that hung over the country and one could only imagine just how truly strong South African football would have been if there was unity amongst all football bodies. The strength that was apparent in the National Football League was also apparent across all races in the other different leagues.

Leaving politics aside, this effervescent nature of SA football served to fire the imagination of thousands of young kids like myself, and this was one of the key reasons SA produced high quality players over the ensuing years, with arguably the pinnacle being when Clive Barker led South Africa to win the Africa Cup of Nations in 1996 on home soil.

Fast forward to World Cup 2010 and the authorities decided in their wisdom to demolish the New Kingsmead Stadium and erect the new Moses Mabhida in its place.

However, whilst Durban and South Africa may have gained an impressive stadium, sadly it has become a white elephant that has had the devastating effect of being a dream killer.

Once the new stadium was built, the authorities also decided that the entire Moses Mabhida precinct football playing fields would be designated for the sole use of the elite.

Where once the outer fields of New Kingsmead were a hive of football activity involving the community of Durban and surrounding areas, in one fell swoop all local amateur and junior clubs were shunted off these municipal premises. Nowadays these outer fields are for the sole use of the local professional clubs or those that can afford to pay the extremely high rental rates.

This in my view is incorrect, as the Moses Mabhida precinct is municipal land and should be made available to the public and more particularly to local amateur registered football clubs at reasonable rates.

On top of all that, SAFA decided decades ago that for all Premier Soccer League matches no curtain-raisers would be allowed at all. Not even games for juniors, who would cause minimal damage to the field, if that was what they were concerned about.

Nowadays when crowd attendances are dwindling at PSL matches year on year, surely it would make sense to re-introduce curtain-raisers at all the matches?

This would attract more crowds in the form of families to fill the seats and create more of an atmosphere at games. Kids would be encouraged to watch more live games instead of growing up on a diet of watching overseas football on television.

This would have a dual effect of building a football culture within our youth, one that they would grow up with and pass on to their kids, but most importantly it would fire up the imagination of our future stars, as they grew up hoping to emulate their heroes that they would watch live at the stadium.

When a kid’s imagination is sparked positively, the world is his or her oyster, and who knows what they could go on to achieve.

Coppola is a football coach, administrator and former professional player