Still In Touch With Japie Motale (Part 2)

Japie Motale, who enjoyed a 15-year-long career in the topflight from 1995 to 2010, having featured for the likes of SuperSport United, Maritzburg United and Thanda Royal Zulu, speaks highly of youngster Teboho Mokoena. “We as the SuperSport legends went to watch the MTN8 final and Kaitano Tembo invited us to the hotel after the game. That’s where I managed to have a conversation with the boy, for a whole hour nogal, and found out that the two of us clicked. He’s also got the same characteristics that I had during my time at the club, something that the marketing manager, Coltrane Munyai, even remarked on when he found us chatting,” says the ex-defender. Here is Part 2 of his ‘Still In Touch With…’, complete with funny stories from his playing days.

- Lunga Adam

Okay, Japie, you are back and we couldn’t wait! As we closed off last week, you were eager to share a story involving Thokozani Mnguni and Duncan Lechesa at Black Leopards. Go for it!

Yeah, so we played a game and then Mnguni, our captain, got injured. He went for an operation. In his absence, Lechesa became the stand-in captain. Then Mnguni came back. You know the story… when the captain comes back, the stand-in captain has to welcome him back and then give him back the armband. But Lechesa was having none of that, ha, ha, ha! What happened is that when the kit manager laid out the kit in the players’ dressing room lockers before the match, with Mnguni’s kit he also put the armband. Not too pleased about this, Lechesa went to Mnguni’s locker and grabbed the armband for his ownership. Mnguni kept his cool about it. I remember our coach was Shakes Mashaba. When we went out onto the field, we were shocked to discover that we had two captains, ha, ha, ha. The reason Mnguni kept quiet was because he knew he had a spare armband in his bag, so he just took it and ran with it, so to speak. Shakes was now also confused with this dilemma because there is no way you can have two captains. They had to talk to Lechesa and tell him that now that the captain was back, the honourable thing for him to do was to let Mnguni be the only one wearing the armband. Okay, fine, he took his armband off. Do you know what happened after that?

Ha, ha, ha, let’s hear about it.