soccer in lwandle

arron and djuri giving a half time team talk

on saturday morning we took 15 of our local boys, mainly made up of arron's winning rooidakke team from the last soccer saturday that we held at the country club, plus a couple of boys from the iraq team, down to play their first 11 a side match against a team from the lwandle township just outside somerset west.

the whole event was a real adventure of the boys, the first time playing an 11 a side game, against a very well organised team, run by my friend mbetha, who used to play for cape town ajax in the south african premier league. the game was played in the middle of the township (mainly made up of black african people and what with our boys being mainly coloured and all the coaches being white europeans this was quite a mix!)

it was somewhat shocking to realise that many of our boys, 5 of the 15, didn't have sports shoes, some had trainers, others second hand football boots but some either came with their school shoes or bare feet...at our sports saturdays we always play bare feet so that no one feels out of place but to see our guys turn up without the basics of a kit was a shock.

free kick to lwandle, do you like the grass!

we never struggle for soccer shirts, but we played in a mix of blue and white hooped tops, shinny green shorts and yellow and or blue and white socks, we did look quite a sight!...however as my dad always told me 'it's not the player with the best boots or kit who is the best player' and we proved that by creating some good goal scoring opportunities in the first half and should have been 2-0 up before they scored the only goal of the game.

the boys played out of their socks, literally, and came away with a credible 0-1 loss to a team who had played together many many times before...they all really enjoyed themselves and were a real pleasure to take on this first adventure.

if you are living in and around cape town and do have access to old soccer boots, sized around 2-7 (that's old english sizes i think) then please let us know and we can really really bless our boys who don't have anything to play in...thanks