News from South Africa

Cosatu, the government workers union that negotiated on behalf of workers, (e.g teachers) that went on strike in August, have accepted the Government offer of R800 and 7% wage increase.
This is good news for the students, mostly the grade 12 students.
Even if they didn't have the full year education, due to the World cup and the strike, they will be sitting for their final exams.
Wire

Grunden-training

Last Wednesday I had training with the Grundens.
We started at 11h15 am in Moletsane Sports Complex. We played balancing games and a little bit of Inabandi.
Eunice, the teacher, helped me since I was alone. I had to explain the games to her before we started. It was fun and the boys only wanted to kick the ball and it was not on the menu.
I have promised that this week they will play football.
The ladies were running around and they wanted to go to their school because they thought it was lunch time.
But we (Eunice and Wire) had to show them the time.
Wire

The great success of Soweto Football Festival

The second Soweto Football Festival (SFF) was a great success.

For Blitz Academy, the 640 players, the referees and the leaders.

And for Moletsane Sports Complex as well.

As you can see from the photos it was a great weekend.

The festival took place 24-26 September, but the preparations started long time before. The first meetings for planning we had already in the end of the summer.

Since we arranged the first SFF last year we had some experience that we could use, we also had a database with the teams from last year.

Planning

On the 24th August booking of the field was made.

29th August Thabiso Masilo and Stapia Mokoena went out to deliver the SFF invitations to teams and Wire called the teams that played on the first SFF last year.
20 September was a meeting with Blitz-leaders that were going to be on the team that was going to run the festival.

During our meeting we decided on the age groups that were boys u/14, u/16, u/18 and 20/over on a knock-out system.

All the games were played for an hour (2x30). Eight teams per age group gave us 32 teams that played 16 games for the first round.

The Blitz crew

Wire – coordinator.

Thabiso Mifi – assistant coordinator.

Penny – referee.

Tshepiso – referee.

Tshepo – referee.

Tumi – score taker.

Gopolang – catering.

Thabiso – event manger.

Theo – photographer.

Meeting with the coaches

20th september at lunch time we had a meeting with coaches that have registered their clubs/teams to play in the festival. Coaches were given rules to guide them for the games. They were 14 coaches in total.

Every coach and player had a guideline of what is expected of them so that the game play according to Blitz plan.

Parents and friends were watching

There were 640 players that took part in the second Sff and there were two female referees that took charge of most of the games.

There were parents and friends of some kids that watched the games.

Every morning the Blitz-crew had a short meeting to get new information for the day ahead .

Team work from the crew and cooperation from the coaches problems we solved on the spot.

The female referees were the best

Trophies and medals were given to winners and medals were given to the runner-ups on all divions.

After the price giving ceremony we had to answer questions about "will there be the next Soweto football festival?

Can they play the point system games next year?

And the best compliment was the female referees, they are the best.