Football Poets

Football Poets on Facebook Poem of The Week

07 Jan Showing The Way Llew Beaton

To see an amazing photograph of the team click here:
Football Poets on Facebook

Showing The Way
Following closely on from the recent video footage of the first ever visit by ***Nigerian Footballer in Europe c.1949)which we published on our Football Poets on Facebook page, this is a great offering and poem from Llew .

It records an even more incredible visit by 1898 – The Orange Free State Bantu Football Club (A.k.a Orange Free State Kaffir Football Club) the first South African team to play in Europe, a 49-match tour of England, France, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Editor Note about the poem:
Having lived through only 7 years of apartheid myself 72-79 (during which time Nelson Mandela was imprisoned on Robben Island) this is an incredible and important account of a time just before the dark cloud of the formal racial segregation system of ‘Apartheid’ descended.

The word Kaffir originally used in the team name was a very common derogatory term used by many whites still in the 70s .
It was used in the former South Africa to refer to a black person.

Now an offensive ethnic slur, it was formerly a neutral term for South African blacks. The word is derived from the Arabic term kafir (meaning ‘infidel’), which originally had the meaning ‘one who conceals [the truth]’

***NIGERIAN FOOTBALLERS IN ENGLAND
We recently discovered and published on our Football Poets on Facebook page some amazing video footage of the 18 strong Nigerian football team, the first ever to leave West Africa. They played nine matches in five weeks against top English amateur sides. The team arrived on 29 August 1949 in Liverpool and were the first ever to visitf rom West Africa.

Check out the video (and scroll down first page) on
Football Poets on Facebook

Football Poets on Facebook
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