‘BIRDS’ THREE LIONS!

My dearest readers ... There are two certainties in life – death and taxes. Now you can add a third – a Mbabane Swallows victory in a Cup final.

As the honey-throated Mbabane Swallows joyful fans belted the longest rendition of their now victory song, ‘Myekeleni Aphumule’ in honour of slain beloved boss, Victor ‘Maradona’ Gamedze, the country’s football immortality wrote their names with iron ink on the hallmarks of Swazi football history.

Let’s unravel this.
 I will just go back three seasons to try and paint a picture of Swallows’ dominance of local football in recent times. 2015/16 season – FOUR trophies including the inaugural King’s Super Cup. 2016/17 season – THREE trophies. 2017/18 season – TWO trophies already. The ‘Holy Grail’ of local football in the form of the MTN League trophy is already under their wing – in fact they are just 270 minutes away from clinching it irrespective of how their nearest challengers, the perennial bridesmaid, Young Buffaloes fare in their remaining four games.

Swallows have been gambolling like a newly-born calf feeling its oats. They have not only, to paraphrase my beloved Manchester United’s former manager, Sir Alex Ferguson’s famous quote on rivals, Liverpool, “thrown Mbabane Highlanders off their fuc&*@n perch,” but they have literally let loose a big cat in their kraal. Yes, Mbabane Highlanders might still be regarded as the country’s most successful club with 12 league titles, but the aura, invincibility, immortality at home and around the continent has since been eclipsed by the bitter rivals. Highlanders’ goose is well and truly cooked.

The Swallows of Mbabane are now, without an iota of doubt, the biggest team in Swaziland and in top 16 teams in Africa. 
For a club that took 12 years to win the next league trophy in 2005 having last won it in 1993, Swallows have proven to be knockout specialists of note. Six league titles now, going for the seventh in the next six weeks; NINE knockout trophies including three Ingwenyama Cup in a row in three seasons has elevated the Swallows of Mbabane into a team that has such an insatiable appetite for anything shiny in the form of silverware as a shark is drawn to blood, bees to honey and a junk to drugs.

The dexterity, workmanship, never-say-die spirit they displayed against Royal Leopard on Sunday to win the Ingwenyama Cup for keeps was second to none. Having beaten the police side six times in a row in all competitions, one thought it was to be the day the dominance ended when defender Machawe Dlamini headed in the first goal with the time it takes to boil an egg – exactly five minutes.

But then the Sifiso ‘Nuro’ Ntibane-coached outfit, like in the previous league encounter, they lost 2-1 on January 28 to the ‘Birds’, resorted to subconsciously defend the lone goal lead. It proved to be a defeatist and suicidal tactic as Swallows forged forward like the great Zulu impi ironically in the Great King Shaka’s war times. Is it not King Shaka who prophesied in his deathbed that ‘Liyobuswa tinyoni’?
Almost 190 years later, King Shaka’s prophecy has come alive!

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