Kaizer Chiefs assistant coach Dillon Sheppard was a scrawny, acne-ravaged 16-year-old when he arrived at the Safa-Transnet School of Excellence in 1995. Then school principal Steve Pila said they had to convert him from a striker to a defender to protect the Durban-born lad him from having his bones broken in challenges.
“The other boys were going to kick the hell out of him. We sat down with the other teachers and coaches and said we are converting him. In those days, players arrived from unstructured environments and we knew we could get the best out of him in midfield or defence, rather than offering him on the platter to defenders who were going to kick him dwars-deur,” Pila told TimesLIVE Premium.
“Dillon was quick to learn and adapt. He went on to play for all the SA national teams and is surely one of the best players we produced at the school. Look at how much he has achieved in his career, he even played in Europe.”
Sheppard was a technically classy left-back or midfielder who turned out for Seven Stars, Ajax Cape Town, Dynamo Moscow, Panionios, Mamelodi Sundowns, Platinum Stars and Bidvest Wits in a 20-year professional career that spanned 1997 to 2017.
Today, both Pila and Sheppard are hurting because of the state of affairs at the SA Football Association’s once productive talent hotbed school. In their day, every soccer-loving kid wanted to go there before various club and private development academies sprang up around the country. Scouts searched under every rock in the country for talented laaities and to the back of beyond to unearth gems — and only the crème-de-la-crème were chosen.
So professional clubs were always circling the school like vultures. With players like Steven Pienaar, Lucky Maselesele, Gerald Sibeko, Mbulelo “OJ” Mabizela, Bernard Parker, Shaun Potgieter, Bryce Moon, Masilo Modubi, Andile Cele, Daine Klate, Mlungisi “Pro” Gumbi, Brett Evans, Gabriel “Ninja” Mofokeng and Dominic Isaacs at the school, it was easy pickings and harvesting for the clubs. Kaizer Chiefs swooped on Maselesele, Sibeko and Orlando Pirates on Cele. Ajax Cape Town filled their shopping trolley with Pienaar, Evans, Isaacs, Potgieter and Mofokeng.
The school has been allowed to fall into a much-publicised state of neglect, and the production line has dried up alarmingly.
Located in Elandsfontein, just outside Kempton Park, the school offered an impressive educational curriculum with a 100% pass rate, top-of-the-range sporting facilities and grounds. It boasted fine dormitories and boarding facilities, modern dining halls with three well-balanced meals a day. Teams from outside South Africa used the facility at times as a base camp and for pre-season preparations. Visitors to the school from the continent were always in awe when they made a turn.
“I was just a 16-year-old kid from Durban when I arrived there and the school took good care of me,” Sheppard said.
“I was there for three years; the school was sponsored by Transnet, and the quality of the facilities was fantastic. Now, I am not sure what is happening behind the scenes, but they definitely need money. If you look at the facilities and compare them to when I was there, it is very different and the standards have dropped drastically.
“Now the whole schooling part has changed. We used to train twice a day, and school was split into two sessions. The quality of players they were able to get those days was very good. You must remember clubs did not have academies then, so most of the talent was in one place. I got the opportunity to go there through [one of the school’s founders, former Bafana Bafana captain] Neil Tovey and the school helped me to play for the national teams.
“Our coaches were Ted Dumitru, Farouk Khan, Cavin Johnson; Sam Mbatha was my head coach and Simon Ngomane was my English teacher — those are the kinds of coaches we had at the school. I got the opportunity to play for the SA Under-17 team against England, and I went on to play for all the South African national teams — that’s what the school did for me.
“Through the school I also got the opportunity to go to Barcelona with Lucky Maselesele when Bobby Robson was still the manager. I went to Holland and played with [the youth structure of] NAC Breda for a year and came back home and joined Seven Stars, which became Ajax Cape Town.”
Pila also laments the state of affairs in Elandsfontein.
“It’s very disappointing what has happened to the school. Sponsors have pulled out, the facilities are decaying, and the place is a shadow of its former self. We built a great institution, and it is now on the brink of a collapse.
“But I am working on a plan and involved in reviving the school with Safa CEO Tebogo Motlanthe, some Transnet people and Safa technical director Walter Steenbok. We are appealing and calling upon those with funds to come and assist.”
Transnet has been making plans to leave as a sponsor, though Safa want the transport SOE to stay. Two weeks ago, Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi and SA billionaire and Confederation of African Football and Mamelodi Sundowns president Patrice Motsepe expressed an interest in reviving the school. Pila said he intends approaching Lesfufi and Motsepe to take them up on such an offer.
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