Although I am not a fanatic of sports, I do follow, with keen interest, the developments in the sports space. I was recently pleasantly surprised to learn that our own Salima Secondary had grabbed a bronze medal at a recent continental tournament.
This news coming, as it did, on the heels of the departure of our former national football coach, was a source of measured solace in Malawi’s football space, which had been riddled with consistent yet unnecessary losses. It showed that our football was not yet dead and buried. The poor results at national level notwithstanding, something could still be salvaged from Malawi’s football.
Over the Easter weekend I attended an Easter concert by the New Apostolic Church at MUBAS. I have always known this church to be stalwarts in classic music. They did not disappoint. The sound that filled the main lecture theatre was angelic and sweet. Their style is such that they pick choristers from the various congregations to sing jointly. The joint choir, comprising over one hundred choristers, occupied the entire stage in the main lecture theatre. What I found even more intriguing was that an equally large children’s choir also performed, singing, like the adults, organized classic music, and singing it very well. Training starts at the nursery level. Five years from now many of the children’s choir members will have graduated into the adult choir.
This is not what has characterized our football. We have ignored the foundation, the nursery. Serious training must start at primary and secondary school levels. What we have done with Salima Secondary School must be replicated in all our schools. When I went to school in the 1970s, schools were the cradle of our football. I was at Robert Blake Secondary School but used to hear about one Kinnah Phiri at Chaminade in Karonga. Closer to Robert Blake was Dowa Secondary School, which we used to look down upon because our school was by far superior to them in all academic endeavours – quiz, drama, chess and university selection. But we were usually reduced to novices when it came to football. They had Reuben Malola at Dowa Secondary School. It was a marvel to watch his scintillating football exploits on the field of play. He was so gifted that our strikers found it extremely hard to penetrate the Dowa Secondary School defence which Malola commanded thoroughly. Bwaila Secondary School had the likes of Young Chimodzi and Dickson Mbetewa, who turned their school into footballing giants.
These young people were identified while they were still at school because the sports administration of the day placed a great deal of emphasis on organized sports in schools. The Malawi Book Service (MBS) trophy and the Cocacola Shield, among others, were annually competed for among the secondary schools. Clubs used to scout for talent during such competitions. As a result, a number of the youngsters would be offered opportunities to play for the big clubs. Kinnah Phiri started playing for the Bullets (then called Bata Bullets) when he was still a student at Chaminade. When Bullets had big games to play, they would fly in Kinnah from Karonga to join the team. Reuben Malola used to play for Hardware Stars while he was at Dowa Secondary Schools. At Robert Blake we had a gifted player called Godwin Chazumbwa, who also had a stint, albeit a short one, with the Bullets in his Kongwe days.
I would hasten to add that this approach to sports was limited to football. Pupils were required to participate in a variety of field events even at primary school. Every primary school – and I am talking about public schools not private ones – had a pitch for field events, which was also used for football, a far cry from the prevailing situation now. We got familiar with events like high jump, long jump, relay race, pole vault, javelin, shotput, among others, at a tender age. The pupil of today would be a stranger to all these. The lucky ones may have seen them on television.
The good news is that it does not cost much to establish a pitch to be used for athletic events. The same pitch can also be used for football. Instead of purchasing a canvas sheet which can be stretched for those engaging in high jump or pole vault to land on, for example, a shallow pit can be created on one side of the pitch and filled with sand or sawdust. That will provide an excellent cushion for high jumpers to land on. At a very low cost, we can develop our future sports men and women in school.