In Touch With Matome Kgoetyane

Nov 14, 2024 - 02:41 pm

By Tshepang Mailwane

Matome, we just cannot wait to hear what you have to share with the Soccer Laduma readers in this popular segment, especially from your time at Baroka FC, where you must have shared a dressing room with guys who had 'crazy' written all over them!

Ha, ha, ha. Yeah, there are quite a few stories (to share), especially from when I was playing at Baroka. You know working with (Kgoloko) Thobejane was interesting. He was our coach, and it was the first time (for me) working with a coach like him.

He is a good coach, but there were some funny moments. There was this striker we had from Botswana, and he had three one- on-one opportunities in one of the matches we were playing. So, he kept on missing these opportunities. When he missed the opportunity, coach Thobejane was rolling on the floor, and we as the players that were sitting on the bench had to jump over him as we were also anticipating that he would convert.

Ha, ha, ha, Thobejane and his hilarious moments on the touchline are definitely missed in the PSL.

He did not worry that we had to keep jumping over him because he was rolling just in front of our toes. You know when you are on the bench, we stand up when someone is in a one-on-one (situation), so we were already standing up on the bench because we were anticipating a goal. Next thing we saw the coach was rolling on the floor and we had to jump over him. He did not care that he was rolling right in front of us. We were jumping over the coach like we were jumping over cones, ha, ha, ha. I was surprised (by what he did)!

We can imagine how funny that must have been, with your teammate missing chance after chance...

I was so surprised that day. We had moments where we were laughing and it's something we even spoke about in the bus after the game. We had to jump that guy.

He was, like, right in front of you and obviously you would not want to step on the coach, so we had no choice but to jump, ha, ha, ha. I remember when we were playing against Kaizer Chiefs in Durban. There was a moment when the ball went out for a throw-in and he was trying to trap the ball because he was on the line. (Bernard) Parker came through with a tackle and went into the coach, and we all just heard the coach saying, "Yho!" Thobejane is a funny guy and we enjoyed being around him because we would lugh alot of the time. Some- times you could never tell if he was speaking English. But he is a good guy.

Seems like having him as a coach was great for you guys because it meant that you'd often have a good laugh in the dressing room.

Sometimes, after we had won a game, he would be happy on the bus, like he was a child, and he would not rest until we got to Polokwane, ha, ha, ha. You know when he used to say, "Football will kill you a real death", he taught us hat the statement is really true and that's why you hear other people even saying that. People remember his words and those words make sense. That guy was quite a character. There were times during training where he would say to the strikers, "You are going to give me a heart attack", ha, ha, ha. You know what he would sometimes do at training?

Sure, we're listening...

He would take the ball and there would not even be a goalkeeper in the posts. So, he would take the ball and run towards the goal and then he would score and then he would say, "This is how you must score." But there was no goalkeeper there! We were scared to tell him that there was not even a goalkeeper in the posts, and we would just laugh about, ha, ha, ha.

We would wonder why he didn't have a goalkeeper between the posts and then try to score. He used to deal with the strikers and that's why he would say, "Football will kill you a real death." He was someone who liked to talk quite a lot. Sometimes if training was meant to start at 10h00, it would maybe start at 10h45 because he would be going on and on.

Ha, ha, ha, what a guy. You don't find a lot of such characters in the game nowadays, sadly. Anyway, let's move on!

One of the other funny guys I have come across is "Tight" (Joseph Molangoane) at Marumo (Gallants). There was a time he came to training and did not realise that he was not wearing the same socks, ha, ha, ha. Both the socks were white, but the one sock was long and the other one was half the size of the long one, ha, ha, ha. We were all just looking at him and we were laughing at him.

On that 'laughing at him' note, let's take a pause and continue next week. Some interesting bits about the character that is Thobejane this week, and we wonder what the next instalment is going to be about. Cheers!

Ha, ha, ha. Thank you for the opportunity.