It’s Wednesday night and a group of young girls are standing outside Miki Yili rugby stadium. More are standing in the street, gossiping among themselves.
It’s Wednesday night and a group of young girls are standing outside Miki Yili rugby stadium. More are standing in the street, gossiping among themselves.
In a few minutes the stadium caretaker arrives and fumbles through his bunch of keys. Once the stadium is open, they are no longer young girls, but proud and powerful Winter Rose rugby players.
Unlike their usual training ground, the Miki Yili offers space, clearly marked white lines and rugby posts. The team usually practices on a patch of communal land which is shared by soccer players and people returning from work.
The land, located just above the railway line and below Fingo Village, looks more like a field for cattle grazing than a rugby pitch, but since these youths have nowhere else to practise, they have to make do.
For ambitious 10-year-old Siphele Mantashe it makes little difference where she trains, as long as she is playing rugby.
She fidgets with her hands, nervously watching the ground, answering in short phrases. But her assistant coach Creshwill Du Plessis assures us that “she isn’t shy when the game is on. She’s very serious”.
He explains how once the young scrumhalf confidently dealt with two props, who were at least three times her size, with apparent ease.
But Mantashe is quick and agile, and is easily in the lead of all the training exercises. The squad is training for a game in Port Elizabeth where there will be scouts from the Eastern Province U16 squad.
Like the rest of the Winter Rose team, Mantashe is looking to become a provincial player, but she faces many challenges.
It’s beginning to grow dark and the township lights barely shine enough for the players to see each other. They haven’t started training with the ball yet, coach is still set on fitness drills.
Just before dashing down the touchline, Mantashe throws her red and white All-Stars off the field. “My feet are burning,” she says quietly.
In this age division, the team usually plays barefoot and have yet to train in proper studs. ven so, they don’t have much choice.
Sponsorship is an issue, and the team trains in civvies without rugby togs. The Miki Yili grounds are not in bad condition, but judging by the hardness of the ground at Fingo, these girls will soon get pretty tough.
Getting training time at the Miki Yili stadium is difficult, explains Du Plessis, and he thinks that the council doesn’t want them training there because it wants to maintain the grounds for high profile games.
Even though it was only formed in May, the team looks promising, and players like Mantashe are set to do great things. Her sister Akhona played for the Eastern Province U16 team this year, and Siphelele hopes to join her.
