Merryman Kunene olympics ualifying for the Olympics has been a long and winding road for the national under-23 side, one well pumped-up by long-standing sponsors Sasol. After the euphoria of Bafana Bafana’s 1996 African Cup of Nations victory, the under-23 side hardly meri-ted mention. The team was largely ignored by the media and the South African Football Association (Safa). They sometimes wore colours which bore no resemblance to the senior side. Mich d’Avray was the first coach to be appointed by Safa to direct the squad just months after leading Cape Town Spurs into the last National Soccer League first division championship before the introduction of the Premier League in 1997. D’Avray built the cornerstone of a successful side, yet quit the job citing lack of support from Safa. If Safa had no clear vision of what they wanted to achieve with the under-23 team, Sasol had no such doubts. They always had lofty expectations of the “Amaglug-glug”. In 1997 Peter Ivanhoff, soccer sponsorship manager at Sasol Oil, said the squad was destined for the Olympics. “Through our joint efforts with Safa we will be in a position to identify, develop and train the nation’s young soccer talent. Our ultimate aim is to support the squad in its goal to qualify for Sydney. Through the funding we are making available to the team, the first step in achieving that honour will be to win a gold medal in the All Africa Games.” However, at the All Africa Games in Johannesburg last year the gold medal went to Cameroon and the hosts finished a pitiful third after succumbing to Zambia in the semifinals. But that tournament was not a complete waste of time for new coach Ephraim “Shakes” Mashaba, promoted from the under- 20 squad, as qualification for the Olympics would require a journey around Africa to play against the same opponents – Cameroon, Guinea and Ghana. The side failed to secure outright qualification through the group stages and had to do the job in a play-off against New Zealand.
While many people have started to talk in terms of getting a medal, captain Matthew Booth has called for caution. Booth says qualifying for the games was the ultimate goal for the team and it will be difficult to ask the players to dig deeper than that. “For us to qualify was a major victory, I am not really sure we would want to raise our expectations any further even though we will give it our best shot. We are just glad to be there and want to make the best of it.” For Mashaba, a new evil seem to conspire against the team. He thinks he is not getting from Safa the sort of support that befits a team that will defend the national pride. Fixture congestion – the curse of modern football – means he will not have enough time to prepare the team. And some friendly matches have been cancelled because of Africa’s stand-off with Asia caused by the ill-fated 2006 World Cup bid. Mashaba and his players know they are ill-prepared for Sydney yet they remain optimistic about the games. “We are not as prepared as we would have liked. Some of the overseas-based players are not available and it would be impossible for the coach to get them for friendly matches. The domestic league also seems to be going on forever while some of us could have done with a rest,” says Booth. Apart from the availability problems of overseas-based players like Benni McCarthy, Quinton Fortune and Delroy Buckley, there are doubts about the mental fitness of home-based players like Steve Lekolea, Jabu Pule and Siyabonga Nomvete – who seem to be underperforming due to fatigue. Without wanting to treat the games as an early summer holiday, the players could take some comfort from Bishop of Central Pennsylvania Ethelbert Talbot’s words of 1908, later adopted as an Olympic creed: “The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph, but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered, but to have fought well.”