He had it coming. It is a measure of Craig Rosslee’s standing at AmaZulu this season that not an eyebrow was raised when he was handed a one-way ticket to Cape Town, ending a relationship that had descended into farce over the past few months.
Those who had seen Rosslee in recent months, wandering aimlessly in the relative calm of The George in Umhlanga, often sipping in silent contemplation, would speak of a man wearied by the pressures of taking a club to the next level.
And if Rosslee was still hopeful of turning things around on the field, the mob that descended on training, on more than one occasion, made it abundantly clear what they thought of him.
Like fleeting summer romances, the shelf life of most coaches starts so brightly, but the winter that ends things is often wickedly sudden.
Rosslee, though, looked resigned to leaving even before the season started.
The infamous presser to launch the season, where the now-axed coach publicly disagreed with the club’s directors about what the club was aiming for this term, was almost a cry for help.
Rosslee may have felt that he was pushed more than that he dangled himself on the edge of the cliff, but the truth remains that after that opening media session, the bomb had started ticking.
Unless he began the season like the gallivanting locomotion that is Kaizer Chiefs, his fate was only a matter of when, rather than if.
The love was gone. The fans, blindly loyal, even if routinely frustrated by the team, took Rosslee’s rebellious actions, even before a ball was kicked, as a personal affront.
They hadn’t forgotten the lofty promises he’d made upon arrival; talk of a return to the glory days, the cup-winning days of the 1990s, when green meant gevaar in South African football.
Sadly, they’d renamed him “Loss-lee” by September, a reflection of the team’s form on the field, as well as the simple fact that the former Ajax Cape Town minder had also lost the dressing-room.
He was a dead man walking, and this split is probably the best thing for everybody.
Football fans in South Africa are notorious for mob justice. Sadly, my Zulu people are quick to down the negotiation tools, and resort to more primitive means of resolution.
It’s not just confined to KZN, of course. Football fans, by nature, have a short tether, and they routinely lash out when the tide doesn’t turn quickly enough.
You only have to look at what happened in Europe recently when Serbia and Albania’s Euro 2016 qualifier was abandoned, to realise how rapidly the torch paper can ignite.
Of course, football remains the most simple of sports, and it is this simplicity that allows the men on the outside to see themselves as experts of sorts, oblivious to the pressures that come with playing and managing at the highest level.
Everyone is adamant that they could do a better job and, sadly, when things go sour, the coach bears the brunt.
The fans’ memories are selective, their actions often destructive, and Rosslee is certainly not the first, or last, coach to be ushered out by the 12th man.
Down the road, at Lamontville Golden Arrows, Mark Harrison and his family needed police escorts to come out of the stadium alive last season. These things are not right, but no one would dare argue about the merits of such actions when the red mist descends over the masses.
The romantics often say that football is a matter more serious than life and death, but as Rosslee would attest, it is hard to know the difference when a training session is disrupted by a pack of wolves baying for blood. At such times, you know it’s probably time to find calmer, if not greener, pastures, as long as it’s not Usuthu green...