You want to introduce camera technology into all this funky, gritty concatenation of activity?
And now some spoilsports want to interfere with the majestic display of universal passions. I hear tell that they want to introduce video-refereeing into The Beautiful Game.
Hell no! Introducing technological refereeing into The Game would be like eating tripe that's been cleaned and bleached with detergents, robbing the meat of all its gritty goodness. It's just not ayoba. (Ah, now the subeditor from the suburbs wants me to explain what ayoba means! Get with the programme, comrade, I'm not going to explain what that means. Read between the lines.)
The beauty of football is that it should keep the viewer on the edge, eyes glued to the ball. You blink, you miss a deft stroke - you miss the goal.
Remember Maradona's Hand of God? That was during the 1986 World Cup quarterfinal when the then Argentine captain Diego Armando Maradona scored his national squad's two goals against England. The two goals would become the most famous in football history - albeit for different reasons. The first, after 51 minutes, was a swift, illegal, but unpenalised handball. The second, after 54 minutes, was a tour de force weave through six England players - voted goal of the century by Fifa in 2002.
At first glance, the so-called Hand of God is so fleeting you will not notice the handball - and the referee, and millions all over the world, did not notice it immediately. Until the slow-motion replay, dammit. Why spoil a good game?
Twenty-three years later we are still talking about the Hand of God that demolished England. Mind you, this was a very political game, coming as it did just four years after the Falklands War between Argentina and the UK. Maradona's Hand of God was a subtle retaliation against Britain.
That's the beauty of it. We don't want to descend to the likes of cricket and rugby where you can fall asleep on your seat at the stadium, safe in the knowledge that, if there is a dispute, the referee will consult video footage and thus make his decision. That's not ayoba!
Trickery is part of this beautiful game. My father, who was owner-manager of a second-division National Professional Soccer League side, drummed this message into my big head many times. Steal an opportunity, just don't get caught, he used to say.
The beauty of this game is also the underlying mental games that the players and managers play against each other.
In South Africa the mind games take many forms - but the one that takes primacy is the umuthi aspect.
Every football team worth its salt has got its own sangoma or inyanga. Before a game - even a minor league encounter - players are sprinkled with intelezi (a herb historically used in war). In some cases they drink some indigenous concoctions that will make them strong on the field.
A well-known owner of a professional side that keeps slipping from the Premier Soccer League to the first division is known to fear games that are played in Limpopo. Whenever his team has to play there - Limpopo is the capital province of traditional medicine and witchcraft - the well-known owner of the troubled football side sometimes deliberately misses his engagement. He would rather pay a penalty for non-attendance than expose his players to bad umuthi from Limpopo.
Last weekend I had occasion to sit with a football insider who told me how, if your side had to play in Limpopo, you had to be mentally prepared to deal with bad umuthi. This is how it works: the host side is given access to the stadium two hours before the visitors. As a result, they have free rein to go to the visitors' dressing room and sprinkle it with all the bad medicine that their herbalist can concoct.
By the time the visitors take charge of their dressing room, it will be enveloped in a malodorous cloud that will render the visiting players dizzy the minute they walk in. Not only is the smell nauseating, it is also sleep-inducing, so that by the time the visitors leave the dressing room after a pep talk with the coach, all they want to do is to go to sleep. And sleep they do - on the field, while the hosting side runs rings around the visitors. And you want to introduce camera technology into all this funky, gritty concatenation of activity? It's just not ayoba!
In my day, umuthi that was used by the warring sides included animal parts - from a chicken or a cat - which would be buried the night before near the goalposts. It was believed that this kind of umuthi rendered the goalkeeper almost blind to the balls from the attacking side.
The belief still holds in the lower divisions of our soccer ladder - the stronger your medicine, the more likely that you will clamber the ladder to the top division.
A few years ago, television and newspaper cameras caught in action a man kicking a black cat that had strayed on to a soccer pitch - at FNB or Ellis Park, I can't recall. Anyway, the upshot of it was that the black cat was not just an innocent black cat, but a manifestation of bad medicine. It had to be killed there and then, to neutralise the strong umuthi. That's how deep this shit is.
In Brazil, a hosting side will slaughter a cockerel and leave the entrails on the pitch to intimidate the visiting side. And you want to spoil all this fun with camera refereeing? It's just not ayoba!
But a story is told of how Jomo Sono arrived too late at one of his side's games - and his team's inyanga was nowhere to be seen. Jomo took hold of a one-litre milk container and, in full view of thousands of soccer fans, started running around the pitch sprinkling the contents of the container as he went along. There were whistles of admiration from his fans, and boos from the opposing side. Jomo was working his feared umuthi, in full view of television cameras. What cheek! Turns out, Jomo had simply sprinkled pure water on the pitch (I spoke to him on Friday, and he laughingly confirmed that he had used water).
Psychological game! That's the beauty of this beautiful game. And now you want to introduce camera technology? It's just not ayoba!
Camera refereeing is suited to gentlemen's games - bowls, croquet, cricket, what have you. Gentlemen have all the time in the world - a gentlemen's game can take the whole day or, in the case of cricket, even days!
Gentlemen have time to pore over video footage in order to make a decision. Gentlemen live in villas and castles, while those of us on the other side of the rail tracks live in pondokkies and shacks. We don't have the luxury of space and time on this side of the tracks. We thrive on the breathless intensity of the street. We are of the street. We are the street.
Keep your cameras to yourselves, and we will keep the beautiful game to ourselves. We want to be kept on our toes about the legitimacy of a penalty, or a goal. We love the adrenaline. Video refereeing is just not of the street. It's not ayoba!
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Dukeboy