Who Is Coach B?

Hello everyone,

Welcome back to my second blog post. In this post I just want to give you a brief background of “Who Coach B” is.

Born 09 December 1990 and raised in Pietermaritzburg. I grew up with a family that loved this beautiful game. My late grandfather was a well-known player in the community and up until today I am not sure if my other grandfather played but what I do know is that he coached a team that everyone in the small community of Eastwood knew very well. I was also a big part of this team as a young boy you would find me in the technical area while the games were been played (It seems the technical area was my place from young days☺), when a player was injured I was on my grandfather hip and he was running on the field with me, before the game I was giving out cards to all the players. So basically, the beautiful game was programmed in me.

I started playing soccer in the corridors at home with my family and eventually started playing competitive football at 6 years old, at a small club called Carbineers Football Club. I represented my district team on numerous occasions during my early development where we played against all other districts in Kwa-Zulu Natal. The district was then known as Maritzburg District Football Association (MDFA). I have been playing and loving the sport from a very young age and always took it seriously. The community that I grew up in was all about soccer, every road you drove through and almost every young boy you saw had a soccer ball with them and what talent there was from such a small community. Listening to stories from my grandparents, I would have their yard full of boys and we would play soccer after school every day, I can safely say that is where everything about this beautiful game was actually developed. As I believe the best place to learn how to play soccer is to play street soccer as your awareness needs to be on point in order to see things that you won’t usually see. There was always competition among the boys in the community over who would be the best player and I would always shy away from that as I felt I could never compare to them yet I would play with them every day of my life and compete.

As I grew older my love for the game grew, all I wanted was to play soccer, draw soccer balls while in class and just wanted to be on the soccer field and play the beautiful game. When I turned 15 I joined Lions FC, at the time the chairman was Uncle Neil Tommy. My confidence in the game grew under this man as I saw the confidence he had in me as a player. When I turned 16, I was playing Under 17 which was coached by Calvin Petersen, we competed in the U17 SAFA league and for the first 10 games we went unbeaten. As of late we see a lot of Premier League teams playing the infamous 3-5-2 formation, we played it in U17 (which was almost 10 years ago) and no team could match the talent that Lions U17 had. (Still goes down as one of the best teams I ever played with). This team was later taken to the U19 Bayhill Metropolitan Tournament in Cape Town, most players had only just turned 17 years old and we were excited but unfortunately could only finish 3rd in our group which was not enough to progress but what an amazing experience that was to rub shoulders with some great players of this present day. My position was Central Defensive Midfielder and I was given the nickname “Take No Prisoners” by my grandfather as he would be at every game and give advice on everything, no matter where we played he ensured he was in that transport with us to watch me play. Let’s not take anything away from my parents now, if there was a game where you did not hear my mother either scream at me or the ref you would know there is something wrong. Her words still ring in my ears “Come On Ref!!” and that lady can scream. My dad, well he never played the game but what a wise man when it comes to the game, up until today I will still take his advice on my coaching, he not only instilled so much in me for the game but he made me see things that I as a soccer player couldn’t see, I cherished the moments after a game where we would talk about how the game went and what I should have done to improve. I don’t think they missed a single game of mine, their support was tremendous. They even followed the team to Cape Town for the Bayhill Tournament.

I had played every position there was to play on the soccer field. I started out as a striker, moved to Right wing, then left wing, then Centre Back, then Central midfield then left and right back, at one stage in my career I found myself in the goals as a goalkeeper but that was short lived.

At the age of 18 I had decided to concentrate on school but would still play some school soccer. I was given the privilege to be captain the first team where the great Mr Jubulani Mkhize wrote a great piece on me as he was under the impression that I was just a defender until one day he decided to move us all into new positions and in his report he said that he never saw such a prolific striker, he said that I was what South Africa was looking for to fix the finishing crisis in the country. We had played 8 games for the season and I had scored 10 out of 8 games but also playing half of those games as a defender.

In the same year I was called up to play for KZN Schools from Carter High School. There were 3 of us that was selected in that year and we went down in the history books as the first ever soccer players from Carter High School to be selected for KZN, unfortunately the man who would have really appreciated that was not around to witness it as he had passed away in a hit and run the day he called me to inform me that I made the team. We then went on to travel to Gauteng where we played against Tuks, Moroka Swallows and one of the high school teams where we won 2 and drew 1.

There is still so much more to know about Coach B, the story is just kicking off, we could be here for hours so I think I will stop there and continue at some point in the future. Got to ensure that you return☺.

Brice Petersen (Coach B)