Clive Barker’s genius as a football coach was rooted in something that came naturally to him, his love of South African football and ability to understand and use the country’s diverse culture.
Genius is a word not often used to describe Barker, who died aged 78 in Durban on Saturday morning. That he was seen as a spectacular man-manager and motivator, but not tactically astute, irritated the coach who won the 1996 Africa Cup of Nations on home soil and qualified Bafana Bafana for their first Fifa World Cup in 1998.
A talented midfielder for Durban City and Durban United, his career was cut short in 1969 by a second knee injury. At 37, Barker was a babe in the woods when legendary City owner Norman Elliott made him coach in 1982. He had coached some strong Durban amateur teams and led a fearsome AmaZulu, which included a teenage Mlungisi “Professor” Ngubane who later became the midfield fulcrum of the coach’s Bush Bucks, from 1974 to 1976.
Tovey said what set Barker apart at such a young age was “he kept everything simple. He stressed two areas. One, [the] team being the most important. And second, you needed to be fit, and in both body and mind because we had a lot of inexperienced players who hadn’t played in the Black environment, going to Orlando Stadium and so on.
It was in the resultant, super competitive 1980s contests — held in packed stadiums — that the core of Barker’s 1996 Bafana cut their teeth — players such as Neil Tovey, Doctor Khumalo, John “Shoes” Moshoeu, Phil “Chippa” Masinga, Mark Williams and Lucas Radebe. One spectacular team of the era was Barker’s 1985 Bush Bucks, who won the inaugural National Soccer League and were regarded as one of the greatest club combinations to have taken to the field in South Africa.
Mlungisi Ngubane, one of South Africa’s greatest playmakers in an era that produced so many destructive entertainers, was instrumental in the building of Bush Bucks. As the big Johannesburg teams attempted to lure him to the highveld, he preferred to stay in Durban and assemble a competitive outfit around him, influencing Lawrence Ngubane and Barker’s arrivals at a club bolstered by a sponsorship from Puma.
Mlungisi Ngubane singles out Mark Tovey as a true leader. “Mark would talk to me the whole game, ‘Come on Prof, get behind the ball. Prof, you’re f*cking lazy.’” Ngubane would score and Barker would call it a fluke. “I would get angry and want to score more the next week. Only later, I realised he was motivating me. If a player was big-headed, he would insult him. If a player was low on confidence, he would tell him he thought he was the best in the world.
“But his genius was in two ways. We’ve spoken about the man-management and getting the best out of players. But from a football cultural point of view, he is a man of the football people. He’s a man of the football crowd, of the culture. He knows that business. He knew that sprinkling water would get a reaction from the crowd.”
AmaZulu coach Clive Barker congratulates Trott Moloto on the win in their Nedbank Cup semifinal at Olen Park in Potchefstroom in May 2008.Dearnaley says Barker simply read the situation. “He knew the landscape, understood the importance of muti for and against you, and for the supporters. That is not just experience, that’s a pure understanding of what’s happening in and around the entire game.”
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