Still in Touch With...
RODNEY THOBEJANE (PARTART 3)
“He would be very angry with you…”
“Guess who runs onto the pitch with the speed of a cheetah.”
Rodney Thobejane reveals the secret to what made him a notable defender who was able to compete against some of the most fearsome strikers to ever grace the PSL fields… “I’m a testimony to my players (at Ditlou FC in the ABC Motsepe League) and I always share with them what made me a good defender. Like most defenders, I didn’t have speed, but I always made sure there was space of a few metres between me and the striker. That way, I knew there was no way he was going to outrun me. I also always made sure I was first man on the ball.” He wraps up his Still In Touch with this Part 3!
Last week we ended things off with you saying Dynamos never really engaged in the so-called Special Projects, but that things changed after the club roped in one Sinky Mnisi.
Yes. So, when he came in, the first thing he did was to seek an audience with club boss Pat Malabela, if only to tell him, “You can’t run a team like this. These (other) teams are using muti. Why can’t you at least employ someone who will come and rescue this team? Sometimes you can see that these boys can play, but the problem is muti also. You are not using anything.” Pat countered, “Hey, man, I don’t believe in muti. Muti doesn’t play the game. It’s the players who do.” Insistent Sinky, however, was not about to give up, and Pat gave in. It’s now history that the club went out and secured the services of one chap called Malembe. His muti was said to be the strongest, but looking back now, I can only laugh. We were going to play a game in Nelspruit. Our new inyanga took us to some mountain around 20h00, and there some interesting things happened. He took out a gun and told us to shout, “Goal!” when he fired into the air. “Goal! Goal!” it was after he did his thing, and the 2-0 win was ours, so we thought. Remember we were in a dire situation on the league standings at the time and we used to get win bonuses as an incentive from the club. After that night, the guys walked around like they owned the place, some even sharing plans of their budgets, because it was now a ‘given’ that we were going to win the match. Only that we went on to play the game and lost 2-0! To say Pat was furious about this turn of events would be an understatement. He charged at Sinky, telling him, “I told you muti is not working. The muti man said two and then we lost 2-0. That means this muti thing is not working.” From that day, we stopped using it. Dynamos was never a muti team, to be honest.
Let’s now talk about the characters of the time.
The inimitable Joel ‘Fire’ Seroba, whom everybody knows about, since he is a popular name on this page, was just somebody else and I often struggled to understand him. That guy would kind of ‘select’ himself for the weekend’s game at training during the week. I remember once, under Steve Komphela, we had SuperSport United up next. Fire could not stop bulging the net, to the extent he went on to tell Komphela, “Coach, ah, you see these goals, come Saturday, after 10 minutes, I will have scored two.” Ha, ha, ha. The coach was like, “He Fire, why do you like saying these things every banna, time whenwen you’reyoure doingong wellwe at training?” tra n ng An unplugged Seroba responded, “I’m telling you, coach, on Saturday I’m going to score!” The coach asked, “Who says you’re going to play or even be in the matchday squad?” Listen to this… “Ah, it’s obvious, coach.” Ha, ha, ha. Whenever he realised that he was in the second team at training and that the coach didn’t seem likely to include him in his plans for the upcoming game, he would devise ways to grab the coach’s attention. When he made a pass, he would turn to the coach and say, “Did you see the pass that I made?” No one could separate him from his dice in camp, let alone forcing the other players into being game. However, I was never one of his recruits, and instead I would go straight to my room and nap.
Sure…
Another character was Avoo Dondo, a lad from Nigeria. He was funny in the sense that he used to tease the other players about their dress sense and would also be boastful about the fact that he came from Nigeria. He would say, “Look at me, boy! Look at what I’m wearing!” He would act as if he was from the USA and would even change his accent to sound like an American. But I must give it to him, he was a snazzy dresser. He always told the guys to dress like the professional players they were so that whenever they were walking around Giyani, it should be immediately clear to the locals thatthey were professional players. He would add, “Look at Dondo! When I go around Giyani, people greet me!” Some of the guys were uncomfortable with such talk from him and would tell him to shut his mouth or else return to Nigeria. He would hit back, “Ja, but this is my country as well. I’m an African.”
We’ve been waiting for you to say something about your coach, Jacob Sakala! a aa
Hayi, no, Sakala is a joke. That guy, no, man. Sakala is a crook. I remember when I arrived at Dynamos, he was praising me like crazy. He said the club had been praying for a defender of my calibre and, in his words: “Abo Mgababa nabo Lifa Gqosha bakhulile, bayasidlisa (The likes of Gerald Raphahlela and Gqosha are long in the tooth and are costing us games).” We were going to play AmaZulu in Durban and I could feel that I was going to be in the starting line-up, since he had
been hyping me up the whole week at training. Come the day of the game, he
banna, I’m not in the team! I didn’t ask him anything, but I asked myself, “But why is Sakala like that?” The following week at training, he called me aside and told me, “You see, Danger, it’s not like I didn’t want to go with you there. I want you to at least gel with the team and get used to your new teammates.” I said, “No, man, Sakala, I’m a professional pplayer.ayer I haveave got tthee experexperience.ence What at do you mean by saying I have to gel with the team?” He replied, “No, bheka, abo Mgababa nabo Lifa nabo bafuna ukudlala. Bakhulile and ngiyesaba ukubabeka ngaphandle (look, the likes of Raphahlela and Gqosha also want to play. They are veterans and I’m scared to put them on the sidelines).” I said, “It’s your choice, coach. You are the coach.”
Ha, ha, ha.
The other day we were about to train. We hadn’t yet received our salaries. He told us in no uncertain terms, “Gents, I’m not going to train players who are hungry. I’m going to sit up there. Otherwise you train by yourselves here. If Pat comes here, I’m going to tell him straight that I’m not accepting this situation.” As fate would have it, Pat rocks up, and guess who runs onto the pitch with the speed of a cheetah, screaming at the players, “Guys, why are you not training? Huh? You are here to work maan.” Bemused, we said, “No, coach, you said we must not train and that you are not going to train us because we didn’t get our salaries.” Here is what Sakala said: “I didn’t say that. I said do the warm-up there, I’m coming.” Ha, ha, ha! What I liked about him, though, is that you would always be free around him because he was always joking. There were times we were supposed to start training at 08h30 and we would only start just before 10h00 because he would be having us in stitches with all his stories before the session.
Then there was Foster Mashaba, the kit manager.
Ha, ha, ha! This one time back in the day, Soccer Laduma published a picture of Tonic Chabalala, but mistakenly wrote Foster Mashaba’s name underneath it. When it came to the nickname, they said ‘None’. So we were relaxing, preparing for our session and Mashaba stormed into the change room, saying, “Boys! Boys!” We asked him, “What’s up, Foster?” He said, “Ayoba! Ayoba! Mashaba is in the paper. Now I’m a celebrity too.” He showed us a copy of the paper and said, “Check what my nickname is, it’s ‘None’.” The funny thing is that he pronounced it in the vernacular and the meaning was completely lost, ha, ha, ha. We laughed. It took the coach, Raymond Mdaka, to bring some sense of comprehension on the part of Mashaba. The coach said, “No, no, no, Mashaba, why do you think these boys are laughing so hard at you?” He asked, “Why?” The coach told him, “It’s because you’re not pronouncing it right. ‘None’ means you don’t have a nickname.” Joy turned into sadness, and subsequent to that, he would be very angry with you if you ever dared call him None! Ah, Foster-Foster Mashaba… I miss that guy.
And that’s where we end it. Thanks a lot for three weeks of amazing stories, Danger. We can only feel nostalgic.
It’s my great pleasure, my brother. My message to soccer players is to take care of themselves on the roads. We lose great players in these road accidents and I plead with them to not go out until 03h00 or 04h00 while still having to drive. To players, coaches and everyone in the football fraternity, if you know you are going to be drinking, have someone who is not drinking, taking care of the driving for you. It’s not like you are stupid if you do that.