The Orlando Pirates star showered immediately after the match, as he usually did. He jumped into his car and off he went. It was the last time that his fans, friends and teammates would see him alive.
That was almost 39 years ago, when Pirates all-time great Eric Bhamuza “Scara” Sono died in a car accident in the Free State.
This week Pirates lost Phuthi Lesley Manyathela. For older Pirates supporters and the South African sporting fraternity, that sickening feeling crept back.
Manyathela was said to have been tired after returning from France the previous day. Similar talk of tiredness was bandied about after Sono’s accident. He had played in an encounter with Avalon Athletic at the Indian Sports Ground on Saturday; and kicked off in a friendly against Dobsonville Rangers in Soweto the next day.
It would be unfair to compare Sono and Manyathela. For starters “Scara” gave Pirates and South African football its foremost talent in his sons Matsilele Ephraim “Jomo” Sono and the talented yet eccentric Julius “KK” Sono.
To Pirates he was far more than just a player, having being responsible for the recruitment of a spindly Kaizer Motaung and the tricky Percy “Chippa” Moloi.
Manyathela may not have recruited anyone to the club, but his contribution to its recent glory is unquestionable.
His 18 league goals, the most by any player last season, won the club the championship. In fact it was his goal, coming at the death against Wits University in Phokeng, Rustenburg, that saw the club being crowned South African champions in May.
With that goal he had also fulfilled the promise he had made to club boss Irvin Khoza that he would score at least 22 goals (18 in the league and four in cup games) for the season, to match the jersey number he wore.
No great wonder that the club is considering retiring the number. If it does, it would be the second jersey number that the club will stop printing because of a road accident. The first was Clifford “Tough” Moleko’s number 13 jersey. “Tough”, who was on loan to Cape Town-based Seven Stars at the time, died in 1998.
Although Manyathela’s whose mercurial talents have been praised all round — albeit posthumously — there were times they did not seem obvious to everyone.
After setting the amateur scene alight for Shayandima Arsenal in Musina, Limpopo, Manyathela joined then first division team Dynamos on loan.
Pirates director of youth development Augusto Palacios spotted him when Palacios was scouring the country looking for suitable players for the under-20 national team he coached at the time.
At the same time Kaizer Chiefs scouts had got wind of the youngster’s talent. The battle for his signature ensued.
Pirates won the day over Chiefs, partly because they offered the youngster’s parents more money and — unlike Chiefs, who wanted him to go through their youth team for a season — the club promised him jersey number 22 in the first team.
In July 2000 he made his debut for Pirates in the Vodacom Challenge and created a goal. His detractors could argue that his was a simple tap in, but it was that instinct for being in the right place at the right time, and doing the basics, that would make him stand out among his teenaged peers.
But if he thought that that, combined with his tendency to come off the bench and score vital goals, would ensure he would get a regular run in Gordon Igesund’s championship-winning team of the 2000/01 season, he was wrong.
It was only with the arrival of Frenchman Jean-Yves Kerjean during the 2001/02 season that Manyathela’s immense potential shone through. In that time, scoring seemed to come naturally to him: he was the chief goal-getter for the under-20 and later under-23 teams he featured in.
Manyathela was certainly the lynchpin and the crown jewel in a Pirates team teeming with youthful exuberance.
Now he is dead.
Pirates have lost exceptional players in their prime such as “Asinamali” Metseeme in the mid-1960s and, more recently, Moleko.
But with Slow Poison, eish…
Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya
Lesley “Slow Poison” Manyathela, born September 4 1981, died August 2 2003