The age-old saying, ‘grass is always greener on the other side’, is likely to be simply be a phrase for some folks, however for Zama Aphane, this assertion has been his actuality since he left a advertising and marketing job to pursue a profession as a groundsman.
ALSO READ: Riveiro’s Pirates will play like Manchester City, says Finnish journalist
Aphane is the groundsman at that Atteridgeville sports activities hub, the Lucas Moripe Stadium, named after a son of that soil.
Zama, as he insists being known as, as an alternative of the formal utilization of a surname, by no means imagined that grass-cutting can be one thing that places meals on the desk for him and his household, not to mention take him throughout the African continent.
It will not be typically that the president of a soccer federation can be eager on the complexities of keep a soccer pitch, however to his shock, he has been approached a few instances by presidents or chairman of groups enjoying Mamelodi Sundowns in the Caf Champions League.
“When the presidents from other federations come, they ask for my number and they call me. Sometimes people come to me and they and ask the team officials about the pitch, then they bring them to me. This is something I am not used to from bosses in our local game,” Aphane says.
“I remember there were teams from DR Congo and Mozambique that came to play here and were impressed with the pitch,” Aphane remembers, however his reminiscence lets him down as to precisely when he acquired theese compliments.
While compliments can cushion an ego, Aphane will not be too happy about visiting groups raving about his work. Instead, he would like to get applause from the Premier Soccer League.
In 2009, Aphane was named the Groundsman of the Year and he remembers a time the place he discovered himself in a room with the league’s prime brass. That was the solely time that the award was handed out and Aphane wants to know why the award was canned. To a big extent, he feels groundsmen should not appreciated.
“Bosses of the teams and the powers that be in the PSL have to appreciate us more because we are the people who make the ball roll. They must give us recognition because we are important to football. I got a Groundsman of the Year when Teko Modise took PSL Footballer of the Year, it’s so long ago that I even forgot the prize money (amount),” he says.
Aphane continued: “The players get the awards at the end of the season but where do they play? They display their magic on the pitches that we maintain. Ace Ncobo (former referee) is the one who pushed for that award but now it is no longer there. If it comes back, it will force groundsmen to work harder and that will improve the quality. I can lead all of these groundsmen because stadiums are failing over small things like poor or no drainage systems.
“All the groundsmen in South Africa must make sure that they treat their pitches like their own children because I see some other pitches on the television and they are terrible. Tthe maintenance of the fields is required because they are owned by the municipality and some of them don’t have enough budget, or don’t budget at all for the field maintenance – it is then up to us to cover those patches and make it look gorgeous.”