Marumo Gallants head coach Dan Dance Malesela had strong words against the behaviour of ball balls in his side’s Betway Premiership against Polokwane City at the Peter Mokaba stadium on Sunday.
A ball boy wasted time and was not giving the ball to Gallants in the second half of their 1-0 loss to City, an incident that saw Malesela and his bench stand up to reprimand him. This is the second time in as many City home matches that a ball boy behaved in that fashion following the game against Kaizer Chiefs last week. The same thing happened when Rise and Shine were leading 1-0 victory an incident that prompted Chiefs fans to throw missiles at the boy in frustration.
Malesela believes the kids are learning this from adults and it is wrong for adults to teach kids to cheat as it ultimately translates into stealing from the game and also setting a bad precedent in their growth as people and potential future professionals.
“This is just adults being very silly, you know and I wouldn’t call myself a good father if I teach kids to do things like that,” answered Malesela when asked by iDiski Times about the incident.
“Sometimes we take certain things that are very light. You are teaching this child to cheat, okay. Now this child will start cheating at school as well. And what does cheating lead to, at least to stealing because you are stealing from the game. You are stealing minutes from the game that are valuable to the supporters of football. You know people pay their money not to watch all the shenanigans and all this nonsense that are being taught to our kids”.
“And these kids are going to be footballers, probably one day. Will they want this to happen? So if you are an adult, you must be careful what you’re teaching a child to do. These are our kids. Let’s groom them very well. Let’s teach them to be fair in life. Let’s teach them to be honest. The game must not be win at all costs and then you do wrong things. Win at all costs yes, but doing the right things. Don’t do the wrong things. Don’t teach kids small things and then the next thing, you are happy when you get away from this thing and shaking hands, and you are clapping hands, and you are happy because it’s more like you’re doing a good job”.
“It’s not okay. It’s not okay for the game. Anything that is untoward in the game, we must try and remove it. If we lose, we have lost. We don’t want to do anything untoward. If you lose, you must lose with dignity. Your dignity must stay so that you don’t give anyone or any person a room for criticism. People will criticize you for this and this and that, you know, and it spoils your win”.
Meanwhile City coach Phuti Mohafe doesn’t believe the act was deliberate and that it has no impact on the reputation of the club. He added that if the boy was deliberate in the act then he should be held accountable.
“I don’t think that was deliberate,” said Mohafe.
“And if that was deliberate then he has to account for because we cannot have this kind of situations, whereby the opponents come to our fortress and they suffer for the balls. We must play fair and I think on that moment and on those situations, we just need to call them into order”.
