A key part of the province’s football history will be celebrated next week when former players and managers of Durban City Football Club gather to pay tribute to their fellow players and reminisce about times gone by.
Some of the club’s former luminaries who will be there include Clive Barker, Johnny Louch, one of the people behind the Toys for Joy charity, and Paul Lafferty, better known for his involvement in horse racing these days.
Formed by Norman Elliot in 1959, Durban City FC, which was a whites-only club, is possibly the only team that can boast of being registered in all three leagues in South Africa during those years: the National Football League, the Federation Professional League and the National Premier Soccer League.
So far, former club members who have settled in countries like Canada and the UK have already indicated that they will be flying home to be part of the celebrations at the Hollywoodbets Parkhill Bowling Club in Durban North on Sunday, October 30.
One of the organisers and former Durban City goalkeeper, Doug Coetzee, said he was looking forward to catching up with former teammates and hearing about their soccer journeys.
During his heyday in professional football, Coetzee was Durban City’s main goalkeeper until he broke his leg.
Taking time out to heal opened a gap for someone else, and a new star was born.
At the time, Zimbabwean footballer Bruce Grobbelaar stood in for Coetzee, and that’s where his career took off.
“Bruce was a talent that comes once in a lifetime,” Coetzee said.
Grobbelaar ended up in England, where he played for Liverpool from 1981 to 1994, pocketing a number of trophies with The Reds, including six league titles.
However, Grobbelaar is just one of many big names associated with the club. Others include Clive Barker, Butch Webster and Budgie Byrne, as well as brothers Mark and Neil Tovey.
Coetzee said during the height of apartheid, Durban City FC defied the unjust apartheid laws and allowed players of all colours to do what they loved ‒ just play the beautiful game.
“We were always a progressive team. We did recruit players of colour,” said Coetzee.
Those players included Jackie Naraidu, Moffat Zuma, Rodney Charles (who will be coming to the event from his home in Swaziland), Deena Naidoo and Mthofi Khumalo.
Coetzee said there were many white players who wanted to play in the townships, and if it wasn’t for apartheid, South Africa would’ve been like Brazil, a football incubator with a surplus of soccer talent.
He said their fan base consisted of 85% Indian supporters. “At some of the games, we had 40 000 spectators, and about 30 000 were Indian and the rest white,” he said.
At the time, white spectators were seated in the main stand in front of the grounds, and the remaining three sides were for the non-white spectators.
To this day, Coetzee says he doesn’t know the exact reason why the club was so popular amongst Indians.
However, because Durban City played at Kingsmead and was within walking distance of Umgeni Road, where many Indian families lived and because the club was open to recruiting players of all ethnicities despite the harassment by the apartheid police, these were some of the reasons why many people of colour supported the team.
Durban City FC was eventually sold to a group of Durban business people but closed its doors in 1988, just a few months after the takeover.
Coetzee has invited all those who have been part of the Durban City FC family to join their event next week. He said Hollywoodbets was a sponsor of the event and would print special Durban City regalia for those who attended the function, which will start at noon.
Coetzee said there was no need to RSVP, and those who could make it should be at the Hollywoodbets Parkhill Bowling Club, 50 uMhlanga Rocks Drive, Durban North, at midday next Sunday.
The Independent on Saturday