Bobby Clark spun black-and-white straw into gold

Innocent Kurira, Sports Reporter

IN one of his conversations with Scottish writer Stephen Walsh, former Highlanders’ coach Bobby Clark gives an insight into a solidarity chat he had with former club great and coach Madinda Ndlovu after Bosso’s terrible start to the 2019 Premier Soccer League (PSL) season.

Highlanders had one of their worst starts in a PSL season that year, failing to record a win in their first eight league games, losing three and drawing five times.

Ndlovu eventually quit as coach in June and headed to Botswana, leaving Bosso just two points above the relegation zone with 14 points from 12 games at the halfway mark.

According to Walsh, writing in the Scottish football periodical Nutmeg, that season reminded Clark of the time he arrived at Highlanders as coach in 1983.

The bad results the team had were something he had never endured before, and ironically Ndlovu was a star man of that Bosso team.

Clark said he made a phone call to Ndlovu, reminding him of the early 1980s hurdles that their team went through.

“I was actually speaking to Madinda not so long ago about this. I was asking him, ‘can’t you remember how difficult it was in the opening part of the season?’ We could hardly win a game to begin with. Of course, you question yourself. It was my first real coaching job. I would say that when you’re not local you don’t feel the pressure. I used to say to myself if the players aren’t enjoying themselves, I’ll go. If I felt I had lost the team I would have gone. If you’re a coach and you’ve lost the team then you’re in trouble,” Clark said.

This reminded Walsh of his time as one of the white expatriate teachers at Msiteli Secondary School brought in by the Government in the early years of independence to help transform western suburbs’ schools where local whites feared to tread.

Walsh was the coach of Msiteli’s football first team and he says Clark should have taken a leaf out of his coaching book, which entirely disproved that he’d have quit if he had lost control of the team.

The Msiteli team was winning every competition they played in and Walsh had lost control of the players.

He was coaching the goalkeeper of the national Under-20 team and about three other players from the then Super League clubs.

“After a session or two they (players) suggested a new division of the coaching responsibilities. They would pick the team, decide on a game plan, and deliver it; and I would slice the oranges. It worked like a dream.

“From trips home I brought gifts, gloves for John Sibanda, who would eventually take over from Bruce Grobbelaar in the national side, shinpads for Garikayi Rwodzi, who was breaking through for Saints, and for Dumisani ‘Savimbi’ Nyoni, whose nickname, based on his resemblance to Angolan rebel leader (Jonas Savimbi), stuck with him through his long professional career. In exchange I got to sit on the bench and watch them train, with tactical talks in isiNdebele football Franglais: ibhola, ibox, ukhipa, ipresha amagoalposts,” Walsh reminisces.

However, Clark had an apprenticeship under Sir Alex Ferguson when he signed for Aberdeen as a goalkeeper from the Spiders, and it was that apprenticeship that naturally led to his career in coaching.

He managed New Zealand for a while and recently retired after many years on the US College circuit, but his first real appointment as a coach was with Highlanders, including outreach to Bulawayo schools.

“I’d just finished playing for Aberdeen. In my last five years as a player, I had been helping with the coaching around the club, and I’d done my badges of course. With Alex Ferguson there, it was a good time to be at Aberdeen, but the time came when it was time to go. I heard Malcolm King, the chairman of Highlanders, was in the UK looking for a coach. To cut a long story short, myself, my wife and my family all went out. We had a wonderful year or two,” Clark said.

However, Clark soon learned that Highlanders is one of those “més que un club” (more than a club) teams when he arrived in Bulawayo in 1983.

The comparison with Barcelona is obviously not to scale, but Walsh writes that for supporter intensity, it carries some validity.

While Highlanders was not the only team in Bulawayo, Walsh said at that time there was only one team in town.

Walsh said his pupils at Msiteli left me in no doubt which team he should support, although the headmaster had tried his best to lure him to support Zimbabwe Saints with a pre-match tour of the shebeens and a good seat in a game they drew 2-2 with Gweru United.

“It was useless. Within weeks I was making the follow-the-crowd walk to Barbourfields where Bosso play. There, in the tall, concrete, shrill-whistly grandstands I enjoyed some seasons in the sun,” Walsh writes.

Walsh has been a Highlanders fan ever since, although Clark’s first season in charge of Bosso was traumatising and is still remembered as “that season” for its uninspiring series of draws and defeats.

However, Clark soon got to grips with local football and he started to spin Bosso’s black-and-white straw into gold.

“There’s no mystery to it, you know. I wouldn’t say the problems arose because the team was in a transitional period or any of that stuff. I didn’t really know the players, but I did know they had not been very good the year before. I think they just weren’t good enough. So, we had to sort that all out,” Clark said.

Walsh says Clark was also clever in his choice of lieutenants after settling for Cosmas Zulu, a legendary figure in Zimbabwean football with over 50 years’ coaching experience now.

“Cosmas Zulu came in as my assistant. We had a guy called Doctor Dlamini, not a coach, but he was a good person, who got things working. We found a few players in the opening weeks. Bigboy Ndlovu, Douglas Mloyi, known as ‘British’ for his no-nonsense style, Willard Khumalo from the youth team; he was a 16-year-old, but he could lift the crowd and Madinda, he would hit them from everywhere, and they started to go in. It changed slowly. We gradually began to tie games. And then by the end of the season, we were beating teams by four or five (goals) that had beaten us early in the season. It was wonderful,” Clark said.

Walsh also recalls how wonderful it was for him watching Bosso’s transition under Clark at Barbourfields Stadium.

“I was there when Bosso beat Bata Power (the Gweru Shoemakers), Dairibord (the Harare Milkmen) and Rio Tinto (the Kadoma Goldminers). In iClassico, the Harare bigwigs Dynamos needed all the felinity of their goalie (Japhet) ‘Short Cat’ M’parutsa to escape with a draw. Highlanders were safely in mid-table and Bobby had done his job,” Walsh writes.

Clark says he’d love to return to Zimbabwe and has told Madinda that if Highlanders can get to a cup final he could come over.

“Highlanders means a lot to me. I look out for the results of all the teams that I’ve been involved in, but obviously, Highlanders was very special and still is. We’re big Highlanders’ fans in the Clark family.”

Clark’s sons played for Highlanders’ youth teams and had absorbed themselves into the Ndebele way of life and learning isiNdebele by the time the family packed their bags in 1984.

One of his sons Tommy, who was 14 at that time, still has “memories of wonderful, carefree years, wandering the dusty townships with my friends”.

Tommy returned to Zimbabwe to work as a teacher and played for Highlanders for a year before returning to the United States for his medical studies.

“When I was playing in Zimbabwe, HIV/Aids was a problem, but I don’t think I had one chat about it. Later I realised that people were dying, footballers who had nothing seemingly wrong with them; that out of three centre midfielders I played with at Highlanders, two had died. There was a culture of silence. While people were struck down all around, communities remained mute,” Tommy says.

Tommy set up Grassroot Soccer, using football to enact health education programmes in high-need areas around the world, including Zimbabwe. — @innocentskizoe