Stellies soccer star Tylon Smith nets deal with UK club

After years of hardship and grit, the determined 20-year-old central defender has landed a life-changing deal with Queens Park Rangers

- By Dennis Cruywagen

Many a night as he lay on the small bed that his divorced mother, Nicolette, insisted he sleep on, while she slept on the floor in the wooden structure that was their home, young Tylon Christopher Smith vowed: one day he would make it big as a soccer player. Then he would buy his mother a decent, comfortable home.

These weren't just words to console himself - they were serious intentions. Smith, the youngest of three children, saw his mother refusing to allow poverty to destroy her family.

He watched and learnt from her as she shared what little she had with others who had less than she had in Kriefgat, an informal settlement in Jamestown on the fringes of Stellenbosch, where they lived.

In Kriefgat, a derogatory Afrikaans word that means the rear end of a lobster, community activist Nicolette inspired her son, who was born on 9 May 2005. They were very poor so poor that he remembers playing soccer matches in a pair of borrowed boots until the captain of Stellenbosch FC gave him his first pair of boots when he was 14 years old.

Smith cannot remember having had his own ball to dribble or kick around as a child. As a youngster, he played as a striker, a position that means plenty of goals. Today, as a 20-year-old soccer player, he is a central defender: a stopper of strikers.

In an interview early in July, Smith, who has developed into one of South Africa's hottest young football talents, spoke about the impact of his parents' divorce, poverty, hard times and the better times ahead.

He is on the cusp of making it big in England, having been offered a four-year contract with the English side Queens Park Rangers (QPR), who play in the EFL Championship, the division below the Premier League.