Too much play away from home

Am I the only one surprised by Irvin Khoza's comments in the Sunday Times? The chairman of my chosen soccer club, Orlando Pirates, told the paper that "it is not a secret that wherever the players play, be it Bloemfontein or Durban, they have a girlfriend for every away match". Huh?

Not everyone is a reclusive family man like former Manchester United legend Paul Scholes. But Khoza has young players - including 20-year-old Seanego Masalaelo, 22-year-old Lehlogonolo Masalesa, 23-year-old Brighton Mhlongo and goalscoring machine Kermit Erasmus, 23 - on his payroll and surely he should be delivering a different message?

His comment was one of resignation. He may as well have been rapping along to Ludacris's Area Codes: "I've got hoes I've got hoes, in different area codes (area, area codes ... codes)".

Nobody is acting holier-than-thou here. As an unattached young man with few responsibilities one can feel invincible and get carried away. But here's the thing, Senzo Meyiwa, as revered as he was, was a married man - with four pre-adolescent children with three different woman.

I have a younger brother who has just turned 24 and he has a one-year-old son. That my brother is a staunch Kaizer Chiefs fan, the only one in the family, doesn't matter here. What matters is that my brother, stubborn as he can be, has always been weak-willed and, what with the ups and downs in our parents' marriage (our father died at this time nine years ago), there hasn't been an example to suggest that marriage can be a successful institution.

Many sportsmen, including Tiger Woods, Ashley Cole, Wayne Rooney, John Terry and Jonty Rhodes, have been the subject of newspaper and gossip magazine reports alleging and exposing lurid and unsavoury love lives. Why is nobody asking whether these stories could encourage the likes of my brother and his soccer-loving friends to assume that adultery is socially acceptable?

Sportsmen are just pop stars on a pitch. They pack sizeable clout and it is accepted that children are much influenced by people in the public eye.

Whether one believes in the union of marriage or not is also not the point here. According to UNAIDS, we live in a country that has the highest prevalence of HIV/Aids in the world, with 5.6million people living with HIV and 270000 HIV-related deaths recorded in 2011.

It is also just under nine years since Khoza lost his daughter Zodwa to Aids-related complications.

Khoza was quoted in the Sowetan then as saying it was sad that she had contracted HIV in her marriage.

Zodwa was married to the late Bafana Bafana player Sizwe Motaung and had divorced him after discovering that he had infected her with HIV. Motaung died 13 years ago, aged 31.

A few weeks back, it was reported in the UK that the West Bromwich Albion club chairman Jeremy Peace had called for a system to protect the game's young millionaires from "frittering away their wages". He called it a "too much, too soon" culture. Liverpool coach Brendan Rodgers was quoted as saying: "Young players get carried away and then wonder why their careers fall away. They buy a new Range Rover Sport before they have a driving licence."

Neither man said anything about infidelity but everything about what this is all about: excess. Sex, money, alcohol and drugs all fall under this umbrella.

Perhaps our club chairmen, including Khoza, Bobby Motaung (Kaizer Chiefs), Patrice Motsepe (Mamelodi Sundowns), Khulu Sibiya (Supersport United), Leon Prins (Moroka Swallows), and Ari Efstathiou (Ajax Cape Town), need to start a similar discussion.

There is acknowledgement that the wayward culture needs to be curbed and that young stars need guidance. Former Italian soccer star Paolo di Canio says these "playboys" need to be prevented from burning their promising careers.

It's about time we had the same talk in South Africa - across all sporting codes.