AFC Leopards mark 50 years of glory and pain but where is the fanfare?

There was once a Brazilian football coach who gushed that some of his country’s footballers were so skilled in their art that they could do with their feet what many people could not do with their hands.

I didn’t doubt him because I once saw Pele, the greatest of them all, live. Neither did I doubt that we, too, had players of the same mould because I had seen flashes of their prodigious skill burst before my disbelieving eyes.

I was a Nation sports reporter covering the return league match between AFC Leopards and Gor Mahia on September 8, 1984. Leopards had won the first leg 1-0 and were gunning for a repeat. Gor wanted to even the scores. Even neutrals, such as there were, needed nerves of steel to contain the suffocating tension.

But one player put on an astonishing act of exhibitionism that was completely out of character with the stiffness on the pitch. This is what I reported to my readers: “At 5:05pm Leopards defender, Mickey Weche overlapped and found himself confronted by Gor winger Sammy Onyango. He paused and found the way blocked.

Without further thought, he trapped the ball between his right heel and the top of his left foot and sent the ball spinning over his own back and over his opponent.

“He ran past Onyango, trapped the ball again and sent it over to midfield. I thought that was art in its purest form, a performance worthy of the highest levels of football. Talent? We got it.”

In the purity of its genius, that piece of sorcery, together with the flying save that I once saw Mahmoud Abbas make and all the other countless moments of heart stopping artistry over the last 50 years, must have inspired the slogan “Ours Forever” among the club faithful.

But, of course, that is only one side of the AFC Leopards story. The one I never told you about is how Henry Omondi died. Omondi was a Leopards defender of the 1980s era; not as great as the legendary Josephat Murila or Daniel Anyanzwa or Jonathan Niva before him – but a first eleven member all the same; a big statement to make for a player of that time.

He was an itinerant tenant who always lived in a single room in various estates in Nairobi’s Eastlands. One day, he failed to wake up on time.

After knocking on his door several times without answer, his neighbour and team mate, Peter Lichungu, peered through the key hole and saw him lying in what appeared a comfortable position on his bed.

Lichungu was in a hurry and decided to let his friend continue sleeping but on running into Edward Kiiza, he made a point of telling him that he had unsuccessfully tried to wake Omondi up. Kiiza was a big Ugandan who had made Kenya his home.

He was a redoubtable defender with Black Mamba, a middle ranking team which though never in the running for the league title, always gave hell to the big boys who kept Mamba in its place by constantly poaching its rising stars. Mamba thus had the characteristic of a plant whose head was always getting chopped every time it sprouted. It never grew and eventually died.

Kiiza promised Lichungu he would pass by and have a word with Omondi. Lichungu went on his way. Later in the day, Kiiza told Lichungu that Omondi never woke up.

They had to break into his room when he failed to respond to the ever desperate bangings on his door. They found him dead.

Such a death is not exactly unusual but it is the manner of the transportation of his body home that was.

His casket, with the handful of earthly belongings he owned – a few clothes, bedding, stools and soot-covered pots – was loaded on a tipper lorry, the kind that self-offloads sand and ballast in construction sites. The involuntary thought, improbable as it was, that that is what could happen to Omondi broke Lichungu’s heart.

“I have never seen a sadder sight in all my life,” Lichungu told me. “Imagine somebody’s body being loaded on a tipper lorry.

Imagine his clothes and utensils and furniture with it. Imagine the scene of the arrival of that body home.

There are many moments when I have felt low in football and some have made me quit only to return later after that relentless feeling. But this one reached a depth I cannot explain. To this day, it haunts me.”

This then is the totality of the AFC Leopards story. There is never a dull moment here. One of Kenya’s two most followed clubs has swung like a pendulum from greatness to mediocrity every now and then but it has never failed to galvanise its fans even, strangely, when it plummeted to its deepest lows and was banished to the provincial league.

It rose again, as it always has, and provided fans, opponents and neutrals with plenty to talk about; today happy, tomorrow sad and funny the next.

DAVID ASIBWA

How many can remember what was said when its bulky 1960s era striker, David Asibwa, was suggested for the national team? A wag, waxing analytical, thought that was going to be a mistake. He said: “Asibwa turns like a bus.” There and then Asibwa acquired a nickname – “OTC”.

The Overseas Trading Company was an iconic organisation of the ‘60s that ran a highly efficient bus company whose fleet traversed the East African region.

Its headquarters was the big building at the junction of Ronald Ngala and Landhies Roads in Nairobi, a bus stage that is still referred to as OTC today.
Despite the naysayers, Asibwa made the national team.

On 12th of this month, AFC Leopards marked a low-as-an-envelope 50th anniversary of its founding. This was pitiful though entirely expected given the dearth of intellectual capacity that forever haunts what should now be one of Kenya’s most hallowed social institutions.

Every one of the independence generation of Kenyans who were enamoured of Elijah Lidonde and Joe Kadenge and are still around would desperately have loved to drive into the club house at AFC Leopards and raise a glass to the club’s prosperity and utter a heartfelt wish for its successor generations. But there is no clubhouse.

Every one of these greying seniors would have loved to gaze at the club’s trophy chest and behold the immaculately maintained cups that it has won and kept for good.

But the club does not know where its trophies are and who has them. It can’t explain how public property always ends up in private hands.

So many Kenyans, young and old, would have enjoyed a tour of the clubhouse’s walls to look at arresting black and white images of Livingstone Madegwa, John Nyawanga, Wilberforce Mulamba, JJ Masiga and the penetrating gazes of coaches Robert Kiberu, Gerry Saurer, Graham Williams and Charles Gyamfi. But for those, try newspaper libraries.

In fact, the club does not know for sure when its birthday is – probably a good excuse for the low-key night at the Panafric Hotel. Set aside for a moment that emphatic statement “Established 1964” in its jerseys and website and keep reading.

This report, filed by Nation sports writer Cyprian Fernandes on March 10, 1964, said: “Abaluhya United could be the name of the season’s shock side in the National League due to start at the beginning of May.

“Abaluhya United? It is an amalgamation of five teams, Samia, Bunyore, Kakamega, Marama and Kisa – four of the ‘pioneer’ teams of the League. Former Kenya wing-half Richard Pamba has told me that there will be a meeting in the near future to confirm the amalgamation. He added that Maragoli had been invited, but had not accepted.”

Why that amalgamation process was going on, the Nation reported that Abaluhya FC had knocked out Maragoli from the Ahsan Cup, by beating them 2-1.

The Ahsan Cup started in August 1963 and Abaluhya FC was participating as records clearly show.

Before this, the Daily Nation of September 1, 1962 reported that Stephen Baraza who sometimes played for Abaluhya FC and had previously played for Kenya in the Gossage Cup was barred from turning out for Uganda as he had intended.

The Daily Nation of February 4, 1963 reported that Abaluhya-Elgon beat Abaluhya-Nyanza 4-2 in a friendly match. However, there is no information linking these two teams to the Nairobi Abaluhya Union FC.

On July 18, 1963, the Daily Nation reported: “Some Kenya top soccer teams have accepted invitations to participate in the Allsopp Cup competition organised by the Kenya Goan Sports Association.

The Mombasa and Nakuru teams, which are given a bye into the first round proper, will receive travelling allowances. The entries: Abaluyha, Caledonians (Scotsmen), Juventus (Italians), Luo Union, Maragoli, Nairobi Heroes (Goans), Scots Guards (British Army), Feisal, Liverpool, Nakuru All Stars.”

In this knockout competition, Caledonians beat Abaluhya 2-1 to lift the Cup at the Railway ground on August 5, 1963. Abaluhya’s scorer was a player named Agai, a trainee at the Railway Training School.

STRONG, UNITED CLUB

From these records, it is therefore clear that Abaluhya FC existed long before the amalgamation of those five clubs into the strong, united club that it became after the pivotal event of 1964.

The club existed as an entity as early as 1962 and the events of March 1964 merely gave it a new look exactly like the political directive of January 1981 converted Abaluhya FC into All Footballers Confederation Leopards Sports Club, AFC Leopards for short. It was the same club in new colours.

The new, strengthened Abaluhya FC beat Young Muslims 3-2 in Ahsan Cup on April 19, 1964 to “win their first trophy in their first attempt” according to the Nation.

Fifty years is a short time in the life of any institution because it is within the living memory of many people. But it also a very long time in the lives of football players because of the shortness of their playing careers; at most many do a maximum of 10 years.

AFC Leopards has therefore produced five generations of players regardless of whether you are counting from 1962 or 1964.

You might have expected a football bonanza to mark such an anniversary with matches taking place in the villages of Western Kenya where the legends were born and a special international tournament to be held in Nairobi, with invitations to teams such as Asante Kotoko from Ghana and Kabwe Warriors of Zambia. These are some of the teams that have memorably engaged AFC Leopards in the past.

But obviously, this is crying for the moon. You are loathe calling up any official lest you develop serious dental pains hearing about missions and visions, stakeholder concerns, core values and whatnot while your office is a mobile phone after 50 years of your version of development.

Why are we satisfied with such an excruciatingly low standard? So you think we can beat Al Ahly? Very well, just go to Cairo and see where they are. You’ll think twice, thrice in fact, about your ambition.

I pity Kenya’s footballers. They deserve so much more than what they are getting. When I started my sports writing career, we used to laugh at the delegations from places such as Togo, Burkina Faso and Mali.

The suitcases in which the medics packed their kit always looked as if it had been borrowed from a museum.
Look who’s laughing now.