With this being the last Sports Sermon and Holy Communion offering for 2025, I would like to wish our readers a merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.
Part of my last scripture for the year is to urge everyone to be safe on the roads, to be responsible when they indulge in the merriments of the festive season, and to continue behaving in an exemplary manner.
In the bigger scheme of things, it has been a rather memorable year for the Mzansi sports
fraternity.
The achievements are there for everyone to see.
The Springboks are just an unstoppable mean machine that is dominating the world of rugby in all fronts while Bafana Bafana have re-established themselves as a force to be reckoned with on the continent.
After a 15-year absence, Bafana will play at a Fifa World Cup once again. The junior national teams Amajita and Amajimbos also took part in Fifa World Cup tournaments and rewrote history books.
In the bat and ball sport, and under the leadership of skipper Temba Bavuma, the Proteas managed to deliver their first international trophy.
In athletics, our roadrunners and sprinters burned the tracks with amazing performances and flew the rainbow nation flag very high.
Their names are now mentioned among the world track superstars, and they will surely be calling the shots come the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles in the US.
The Minister of Sport, Arts, and Culture Gayton McKenzie can really get excited and
animated – most often than not, to a point where he can embarrass himself.
But at least the chap is passionate and always available to address and respond to difficult situations.
His exuberance sometimes gets him ahead of situations, like the video assistant referee rollout project that left him and the SA Football Association (Safa) with an egg on their faces after they left the main consumer of the product, the Premier Soccer League (PSL), out in the cold.
It was rather disconcerting when the PSL chairman Irvin Khoza excused the league from the parliament portfolio committee on sport sitting, citing that they have not been consulted and that they did not want to shoot in the dark.
The only blemish is the manner in which Safa continues to be run. The cliques within the association have tainted the success of their national teams.
Bafana, Banyana Banyana and other junior teams should be attracting sponsors like bees to honey.
But it seems the opposite and many funders and investors are still not courting Safa–mainly due to the bickering and squabbles happening in the boardrooms and in courts.
Safa president Danny Jordaan and his co-accused appearing in court for fraud and corruption is a sore sight and goes against the moral fiber of corporate
governance.
But it seems to be business as usual because, as some embedded Safa national executive committee members say, “there is no step aside policy at Safa”.
Having already covered a zillion Safa elective congresses, I am not looking forward to next year’s presidential elections.
Jordaan, who said that the last elections in 2022 were his last term in office, is said to be plotting his way back into the race–and things are going to get ugly during the campaign and at the actual elections.
Here’s hoping after overindulging in all the custard, single-malt scotch, Christmas turkey, fruitcakes, cognac, roast beef, and some cheap hooch that’s enough to knock the hairs off your chest, we will all come back in January without any blue-eyes, self-inflicted injuries or any form of harm Let’s start the new year refreshed and hit the road running.
