Memories and myths: Arise Gor, go where your destiny once took you

Peter Dawo towered above six feet and his broad shoulders atop a bulky physique made him look good enough for a heavyweight boxing champion.

Dan Sserunkuma is barely five feet and his lean as leather muscles would make him look in perfect place in the starting line of a marathon race.

Dawo was the striker who spearheaded Gor Mahia’s historic Nelson Mandela Cup campaign in 1987; Sserunkuma is the striker who is doing the same in the Caf Champions League this year.

Esperance in 1987, coming up in the final, was for Gor Mahia the final assault in an epic journey that held the African continent in awe. Gor prevailed. Esperance today comes in the very first round of the Champions League.

The difference in the physical appearances of the two players upon whom the hopes of hundreds of thousands of people lie, emblematic of the contrasts between Gor Mahia then and Gor Mahia now, is just a portion of the story.

It is not one difference; they are many enough to leave the similarities between the two teams at just the name, the colours and the excitable fans.

Labour of love

In 1987, they played football with their hearts, for the joy they derived from it and the adulation they got from their fans. It was a labour of love. Today, they play it with their heads, never once taking their eyes off the prize of making it to the ranks of Kenya’s super rich. It’s business.

And it is not their fault. It is just the eternal ways of a world that never stands still. It is tough love today and one must work very, very hard, negotiate a good contract and always have a packed suitcase ready to decamp to the house of the highest bidder, whoever that bidder is and wherever in the world he resides.

I loved the team that played with their hearts. I watched all their matches. And when Esperance came in 1987, I was at Safaricom Kasarani Stadium to watch the making of history.

It wasn’t made after a magical Gor Mahia performance, something that we had been accustomed to and hoped for, but it was made all the same.

I wanted to feel the pulse of the fans and decided to take a seat with them. I was soon joined by a group of former Gor Mahia players, the most charismatic of whom was Paul Oduwo “Cobra”, the captain of the 1979 team that had fallen with a thud to Cameroon’s Canon Yaoundé in the final of the same tournament.

I have never stopped believing that that team – casualties of an 8-0 thrashing – was still the best team that Gor Mahia ever assembled from 1968 to date. But that’s a story for another day.

Cobra was happy to see me. He carried a huge bundle of something under his arm wrapped in newspapers. As he unwrapped it, the newspapers in the inside layers progressively became oily until the bundle’s contents were revealed – it was freshly roasted liver, cut up in generous chunks, and not less than two kilos of it in my estimation. That was 27 years before I heard the infamous statement that newspapers are just for wrapping meat.

“Karibu,” he invited me, thrusting the dish in front of me. I politely declined. Cobra and his friends proceeded to folk out the liver with eager fingers as he regaled me with an incisive analysis of how the match was going to go.

He was sure Gor was winning, despite some reservations here and there. It was quite a while before the teams came out and so there was time to discuss Gor Mahia past and present and for him and his hungry friends to demolish the snack.

The 60,000 fans who saw the teams coming through the tunnel that afternoon have never seen another Gor Mahia team of that calibre. It was the last in a succession of great teams that played in the big African league. It was the last team Africa feared and respected.

Relegation to the lower league

And it was the last time Gor Mahia fans looked forward to meeting a north or west African side with cocky confidence. It has been a long, long road downhill since, culminating in a relegation to the lower league that was only nipped by crafty executive fiat.

Those who are still around to remember and who wish Sserunkuma and his team mates good luck today, must endure nostalgic heartache at the memory of the 1987 midfield of Charles Otieno, Abbas Khamis Magongo and George “Fundi” Onyango.

They will miss Peter Otieno Bassanga desperately and they will worship the memory of the conquering captain, Austin Oduor, lifting the Cup; the only time Kenya football has witnessed this.

Otieno, “Charlie” to his peers and “engine of the team” to his one-time coach Len Julians, combined skill with a tremendous work rate that saw him inside the thick of defensive and midfield action. He did sometimes stick out a rough boot but he was as indefatigable as he was selfless. Forwards must love to have such a player close behind them.

When Julians told me in an interview for the Nation that “Charles is the engine of the team,” I never doubted the inspiration behind so high a tribute.

Magongo was one of the best play makers in Kenya’s history. They nicknamed him “Zamalek” because he was the one who ignited the trouble that engulfed the Cup Winners Cup match against Egypt’s Zamalek in 1984.

When he was sent off, his teammates were so incensed that they lost their heads and set upon the referee, earning them a three-year suspension from all Caf organised matches.

The 1987 match against Esperance marked the club’s return to continental activity and they slapped their detractors hard by winning the Cup that very season.

Whoever nicknamed Onyango “Fundi” got it so right. He was a skilled artisan, like a tailor who guides the needle in a perfect straight line or a mechanic who tunes an engine so that it hums low in a delicious purr.

Fundi used to play for a team called Lake Warriors in Mombasa and his acquisition influenced the way Gor Mahia and Harambee Stars’ midfields played in an elegant way.

He had skillful touches of the ball always ending in defence splitting passes. He also had a canon-ball shot. Fundi was one of Gor Mahia’s best signings. He was also in the Harambee Stars team that won the All Africa Games silver medal earlier in 1987.

Dawo was the big name of the time and the reasons were plain for all to see. He was the tournament’s highest scorer with 10 goals and Gor Mahia were soon to lose him to Egypt’s Arab Contractors. In between munching his liver, Oduwo told me why he thought Gor would win.

He said: “Esperance will be preoccupied with Dawo and that will give freedom to (Anthony “Piki Piki”) Ndolo and Magongo. But he will still cause them problems because he is very strong in the air and on the ground, near the goal line or far out.”

That is precisely what happened. Dawo rammed in a Magongo corner kick with an almighty header; his momentum carried him from the edge of the penalty area all the way to the back of the net. The accuracy with which Magongo had found a man so heavily marked remains a matter of awe to this day.

After Gor Mahia had knocked out defending champions Horoya of Guinea to qualify for the 1979 final, Oduwo told me: “There were several lessons we learnt in the first leg in Nairobi. One was that their goalkeeper and his defence were weak at corner balls. We therefore employed Laban Otieno in front because not only is he a very good header of the ball but he can withstand a lot of rough treatment from defenders as well.”

It was not long after kick-off that Gor Mahia versus Esperance 1987 had echoes of Gor Mahia versus Horoya 1979 with the critical exception that Horoya were generally well behaved sportsmen. Esperance went for Gor Mahia with more brawn than skill and reduced the game to a rough house.

Some of the most memorable pictures in the Nation Sport archives are those of defender Taoufik Hicheri sticking his fingers in Dawo’s eyes as if trying to gorge them out.

Hicheri was a rascal who had trespassed into the beautiful game. How it was that Alex Hioba Hioba, the Cameroonian referee of this match, allowed so much wrestling, kicking and shovelling to take place will always remain a mystery to those who saw it. In the annals of the most poorly officiated Cup final matches in Caf’s history, this one ranks right at the top.

At one time, Gor were playing with seven players because Charles Otieno, Dawo, Anthony Ndolo and George “Solo” Otieno were all receiving treatment on the sidelines at the same time.

Kasarani, later to be labelled kichinjio (slaughterhouse) by some bitter politicians who had lost their high positions there, was unfolding before our disbelieving eyes. It was too much to expect Gor Mahia to switch on cruise control and enchant us with their fabled magic.

Farah Adoo, a member of the Caf technical committee and one-time international referee from Somalia, said after the match that he was compelled to give Hioba Hioba a piece of his mind during half time.

“We had to talk to him in the dressing room before the second half resumed and I am glad he improved and the game was now flowing.” Hioba did send off two Esperance players but the game only assumed some semblance of normalcy when Esperance equalized and sensed they could win. They started playing football for the first time since they took the field. But it was too late.

Yet Esperance’s stock rose and rose as Gor Mahia’s plummeted. They won the Caf Champions league twice – in 1994 and 2011 – and the Cup Winners Cup, at long last, in 1998. They lifted the Caf Super Cup and the Caf Cup in 1995 and 1997 respectively. Not a bad record for a 95-year-old club, Tunisia’s most pre-eminent.

Covered all the players

I personally knew and covered all the players who defeated Esperance on that unforgettable Saturday afternoon. They were David Ochieng, Tobby Ocholla, George “Solo” Otieno, Peter “Bassanga” Otieno, Isiaya Omondi, Austin Oduor, Charles Otieno, Anthony Ndolo, Abbas Magongo, George “Fundi” Otieno and Peter Dawo.

Of these, I remain in regular touch with only two – Austin and Bassanga. I know for sure that Charlie, Ndolo and Magongo have died. The rest are somewhere doing something.

This week, Bassanga told me he has hope that Gor Mahia will do well. But he sends a word of caution. “They have done some good recruitment and I think the forward line in particular can strike gold. I am a bit worried about the defence. We have not played Esperance for a very long time and the team we face today is to all practical purposes an unknown entity.

“In a situation such as this, I think our boys must exercise caution during the first 15 minutes. That is what we used to do when faced with an unknown quantity.

Caution is not the same thing as playing defensively; it just means you bide your time as you study the players of the other team.
“It is important not to allow yourself to be hustled into rash action by the fans. Fifteen minutes are enough to let you know their strengths and weaknesses and their most dangerous players.

Then you proceed to isolate or choke those players. I wish our boys good luck and whether or not am there in person, I will always be a loyal Gor Mahia supporter.”

In the 18 years that Gor Mahia waited for a Kenyan Premier League title since 1995, Esperance won the Tunisian league 12 times including the last four consecutive years.

There is the past, the present and the future.

I love history’s lessons because, learnt well, they can be used to craft a hopeful bright future. Knowing what their fathers did in the past, the present generation of Gor Mahia players must use that as inspiration to emulate them. In the Equatorial Guinea/Gabon Nations Cup tournament, Zambia did.