Howzit, Ruzaigh? It's great to have you on the Soccer Laduma pages, been a while. This actually comes at the right time after we recently had a good laugh with your former Bloemfontein Celtic teammate Auguston Leonard, who mentioned that he once brought a pet snake to training, singling out Thembalethu Moses as the one who was most scared of it. Do you, by any chance, remember that day?
Eish, I can't recall that (exact) day, but I know that he had a pet snake. Even Lyle Lakay had a pet snake, but to be honest, I can't recall that day because there were many days when he brought the snake to training. And obviously you know that the fear of snakes with footballers is very big, ha, ha, ha. It's like footballers and swimming, ha, ha, ha. It's the same with a snake, ha, ha.
Ha, ha, ha, that's crazy. Did you ever go visit one of the two guys while the pet snake was there?
Yes, we actually stayed next to each other. Lyle and Auguston were staying together, and I was staying next door. After training, we would always chill together and cook supper together and make lunch together. We never went to training with the same car, though. They were always up to mischief when they were driving to training, ha, ha, ha.
Tell us more about the fun times you had at Siwelele. It seems like you guys had some crazy moments there, with all the characters that were in the team.
Auguston and I used to go grocery shopping, like to Shoprite or Checkers, and we would go to the kiddies section in the store. We would wear the small sunglasses that kids wear and the hats and maybe play cricket in the store in one of the aisles, ha, ha, ha. We would maybe play for, like, five minutes until someone would come and tell us that we cannot do that, ha, ha.
Hilarious! Did you guys ever get kicked out of the store for that? After all, most of the shops do say 'right of admission reserved'…
Everything we did was mostly just about having fun, so they couldn't really kick us out. They would just say, "Hey, you can't do that." But yeah, we had some good times while we were there.
Boys will be boys. You guys were crazy hey, and clearly had all the fun in the world when you were together.
To be honest, it was a good experience to be a teammate of Patrick Tignyemb because there was always laughter in the dressing room, no matter what. We would always tease him about his clothes and the names he used to give his sons. He used to give them adult names, because I know the one son's name is Frank, ha, ha, ha. We were always teasing him about that. We also used to tease him about the cars he would drive. He would drive these big cars and he was not the biggest of people, ha, ha, ha.
He must have really looked funny driving a big car. How small did he look in the big cars he was driving?
You know those old-school Audis, like those big A5s from back in the day. He used to drive one of those. We always used to like asking him for a lift. The car was so big that it could even pick up school kids, ha, ha, ha.
A car big enough to carry school kids? Ha, ha, ha.
Ha, ha, ha. When it comes to his clothes, he always used to wear these clothes (that were) like curtains. They were bright colours. We used to make fun of him. But one thing about us is that we never used to take jokes personally. Every day, we would tease someone new. When it was your turn to get teased, you would not take it personally. Also, we would never go overboard or cross the line, like teasing each other about personal stuff. It was always about clothes, cars and other silly stuff. It was never personal.
You are not the first one to talk about Tignyemb's clothing. Leonard also spoke about it in one of our recent editions. Before we let you go this week, can you share one more story from one of the characters you had in that Celtic team?
Yeah, and there were other guys in the team, like Itumeleng Duiker. We always used to joke with him that the team only signed him to sing, ha, ha, ha. The guys would always say that he was always singing but never playing. He was our singer before the match, ha, ha, ha.
Ha, ha, ha, seems to us that was a bit personal. You must really be missing those days at Phunya Sele Sele. Definitely never a dull moment. Thank you so much for your time, Ruzaigh. It was a pleasure being 'In Touch' with you this week, and good luck for the game against Swallows FC on Saturday.
Yeah, there was a lot of laughter and banter there, ha, ha, ha. Thank you so much for the opportunity.
IN TOUCH FUN FACTS
Nickname: Zaikey
Marital status: Married
Car: 1984 VW Beetle Coupe
Boots: Puma Ultra
Favourite TV programme: Skeem Saam
Favourite food: Anything my wife cooks
Facebook or Twitter: None
Siyagobhoza or interviews: Both
Favourite footballer: Tauric Gamildien
Favourite celebrity: Hayden Manuel
