twenty-four to zero

On Friday night at about six o’clock a rather peculiar thing happened. I was in my room, doing absolutely nothing (a frequent occurrence these days), when Trevor shouted into my window, “Hey Lauren, do you want to be a motivational speaker for the Powerlines?” The Powerlines is a Castle League soccer team. They were looking for a motivational speaker to address them prior to their game against the Mamelodi Sundowns, a professional soccer team.

To be honest, I thought about doing it. I began scouring my brain for sources of inspiration and a few of my favorite quotes did come to mind. There was one from Will Smith about refusing to be outworked. There was another from Bear Grylls about the importance of mental as well as physical strength. And there was all of William Ernest Henley's Invictus, which is one of my favorite poems.

But then I remembered that I was a white, English-speaking American girl who, if I accepted, would have the task of “motivating” a team of young, Afrikaans- or Tswana-speaking South African soccer players. Maybe this was a cop out, but I felt that the culture gap would make it really hard for me to motivate these men… So I didn’t do it.

But I did go to the game! And I should probably explain how and why a Castle Team (which I think is the Division Three soccer league) was playing a professional soccer team. Soccer in South Africa is the equivalent of baseball or football in the States, and it might even be more than that – sometimes it seems like soccer = money. For instance, each year Nedbank (a South African bank) sponsors a soccer tournament. All registered teams from the various soccer leagues (Castle, Vodacom, PSL, etc.) are eligible to enter into this tournament. This tournament is single elimination; you lose and you’re out. But if you make it all the way to the end, then your team wins R 10 million. This match between the Powerlines and the Sundowns was part of the Nedbank Tournament.

Sundowns on the attack!

I went to the match with David, a Peace Corps Response volunteer who has been in Kimberley for nine weeks now, and felt like I should’ve had a go at that motivational speech… At halftime the score was Powerlines 0 – Sundowns 11. And the final score was Powerlines 0 – Sundowns 24. I have never seen or heard of a soccer match in which one team scored that many goals.

The Sundowns about to score a goal.

The game was fun though. Not particularly exciting and a bit one-sided, but there were still some beautiful goals, some fantastic player theatrics and an energetic crowd. I really don’t think there is anything that quite matches the atmosphere around a soccer game in South Africa.


Update: Turns out that this game was a piece of South African history! Never before has a soccer score been this high in South Africa. If you want to read more check out BBC' article Sundown's Making History

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Note: I appologize for the poor picture quality. My camera has gotten a lot of sand in it (stupid, dusty Kimberley) and makes a grotesque clicking noise when I try to turn it on. It also refuses to focus on anything, so I have been forced to use my iPod to take photos. The results do not please me. I also tried to take a picture of the scoreboard but we were too far and the zoom on the iPod just makes everything fuzzy looking. But I promise that the score really was 24 - 0.