Cape Town City’s Surprise Ralani, who hails from the Northern Cape, has spoken of his excitement to see Hungry Lions in the professional game after their promotion to the GladAfrica Championship this season.
The 33-year-old, who came through Farouk Khan’s Stars of Africa academy, spent a decade in Scandinavia before returning home to join City three seasons ago.
Ralani was speaking to Rob Delport in last week’s edition of iDiski Times and says having a professional club in his home province is something that he’s been hoping for.
“Yeh, yeh, yeh, it’s quite exciting because now at least there’s a stepping stone for us back home
in Northern Cape,” Ralani told iDiski Times.
“The whole of Northern Cape has a team now that they can look up to, they can send players to, and start their careers off with.
“Looking now at what is happening with Celtic, it’s very sad because they were the only club nearby us actually that could give us that stepping stone, but now that we have also Hungry Lions, there it is great for all of Northern Cape.”
Ralani, who was a ball boy back in the days when the Northern Cape had their last pro teams (Louisville Pirates & Basotho Tigers) almost two decades ago, says there is a lot of talent in the province, but not much representation at the moment.
“A lot. A lot of talent I think, because if you look now in the PSL, the Northern Cape only has like three players,” Ralani continued.
“It’s me, it’s (Thato) Mokeke and Rivaldo (Coetzee). It’s only the three of us that’s representing the Northern Cape. If you look at a PSL as a whole, how many players from different provinces are there? And it is only us three that represents the Northern Cape.
“It is quite sad, to say the least. But what I know is, there’s a lot of talent, raw talent there in the Northern Cape. It just needs to be unearthed and be scouted. But unfortunately, there’s no window really for them because there was no NFD teams, no PSL teams. You had to go out of the Northern Cape to really make it.”
