MANY football patrons will remember New Kingsmead, the stadium that once stood where Moses Mabhida is now.
New Kingsmead was built in 1961, originally intended to be a multi-purpose venue encompassing cricket and football activities.
However, due to the popularity of football from the early 1960s, and because of the rise of Durban City, Durban United and Addington, the field became the home of football in Natal, as the province was called at the time.
This was also a time when the foundations of professional football were being laid across the country.
The National Football League gave rise to many high-quality clubs across all provinces. Clubs such as Highlands Park, Rangers, Germiston Callies, Hellenic, Cape Town City and Port Elizabeth City, to name a few, in addition to the Durban teams, created a very tough and competitive league, with football of the highest order being played week-in and week-out.
Due to the high standards set by the local teams, there was invariably a sell-out crowd of about 30-35000 spectators at New Kingsmead each week. Fans of all ages packed the stadium and the football was very exciting and entertaining to watch.
For as long as I can remember, curtain-raisers were always played before professional games at the stadium. At least two or three games were played leading up to the main game, starting with the young kids and culminating with the senior reserve teams playing the main curtain-raiser.
In those days, junior and amateur football was played on the outer fields of New Kingsmead and it was every kid’s dream to one day play on the “main”, which was short for the “main stadium”.
My first experience of setting foot on the hallowed turf of the “main” was as a 10-year-old kid, when I was only a ball boy. Running on to the field, I was so mesmerised by the huge crowd that I tripped over my own feet.
My imagination had been captured as a younger child when we would religiously attend every single home game at the stadium with my uncle, irrespective of who was playing.
I dreamed of one day playing on that field and emulating my hero Greg Farrell and many others like Jim McManus and Jim Scott. There were so many top-class players in those days.
I am extremely fortunate to have grown up in an era when I had the honour and privilege to have been able to experience and be exposed to such a high standard of football over the years. It was truly a golden era of football.
The unfortunate thing, though, about that period of time was the huge cloud of apartheid that hung over the country. One can only imagine just how strong South African football would have been if there was unity among all football bodies.
The strength that was apparent in the National Football League was also apparent across all races in the other leagues.
Setting politics aside, this effervescent nature of South African football served to fire the imagination of thousands of young kids like myself, which was one of the key reasons South Africa produced high-quality players in the ensuing years, with arguably the pinnacle being when Clive Barker led South Africa to victory in the African Cup of Nations in 1996 on home soil.
Fast forward to the 2010 World Cup and the authorities decided in their wisdom to demolish the New Kingsmead Stadium and erect the new Moses Mabhida in its place.
There was great excitement leading up to the World Cup, and the stadium itself is a marvel of architecture and an international landmark.
However, while Durban and South Africa may have gained an impressive stadium, sadly it has become a white elephant that has had the devastating effect of being a dream-killer.
Once the new stadium was built, the incumbent authorities also decided that the entire Moses Mabhida precinct football playing fields would be designated for the sole use of the elite.
Whereas the outer fields of New Kingsmead were once a hive of football activity involving the community of Durban and surrounding areas, all local amateur and junior clubs were shunted off these municipal premises in one fell swoop.
Nowadays these outer fields are for the sole use of the local professional clubs or those that can afford to pay the extremely high rental rates.
This is wrong, in my view, as the Moses Mabhida precinct is municipal land and should be made available to the public and, more particularly, to local amateur registered football clubs at reasonable rates.
To top it off, Safa decided decades ago to scrap curtain-raisers for Premier Soccer League matches. They don’t even allow games for the juniors, who would cause minimal damage to the field if that is the primary concern.
Considering that crowd attendances are dwindling at PSL matches year on year, surely it would make sense to re-introduce curtain-raisers at all the matches? This would attract more people in the form of families to fill the seats, and create a better atmosphere at games.
Youngsters would be encouraged to watch more live games instead of growing up on a diet of Premier League football on television.
This would have the dual effect of building a football culture within our youth that they will grow up with and foster in their own kids, but most importantly it would fire up the imagination of our future stars, as they too grow up hoping to emulate their heroes that they will watch live at the stadium.
When a young person’s imagination is sparked positively, the world is his or her oyster, and who knows what they could go on to achieve.
* Coppola is a former professional footballer, a coach and a football administrator