Day Caf and referees conspired to slow Gor’s rise in Africa

Greetings from Medellin, Colombia! Apart from the business that brought me here, I have also been keenly following up on a major and tragic story that happened here some 20 years ago that shocked the world.

After Colombia got knocked out of the World Cup by minnows United States, thanks to an own goal by Andres Escobar, the 27-year-old was gunned down outside a night club soon after the team’s return home.

Will bring you this story soon and link it to how Kenyans react to players deemed to have sold the game.

So as I took in the sounds and sights of Colombia, it seemed like I got carried away and had my facts mixed up in last week’s article as several readers pointed out.

The offending paragraph claimed that it was Zamalek that recently hammered Gor in the continental and went ahead to defiantly say that we hammered the Egyptian team to clinch the inaugural Nelson Mandela Cup.

Mea Culpa (I am guilty and a huge apology is in order). Indeed it was Esperance of Tunisia that did the damage. It is also the same team that we taught what tenacity is all about when we lifted the African diadem in 1987.

It literally took blood, sweat and blood as my friend Peter Ochieng’ Dawo “Omuga” (Rhino) can confirm to you. One of the forever etched images from the Tunis leg of that cliff-hanger is of Gor defender Isaya Omondi “Janabi” (the Prophet) chasing an Esperance player right out of the pitch, a fist ready after the thieving Arab played rough on him.

The fact that more than a quarter century later and our sorry looking neighbours are yet to reach any continental final speaks volumes of the kind of football played at the Leopards’ den.

In hindsight, I do not believe I was far off the mark on Zamalek. Those of us who remember that day early in 1984 when Gor faced them in Egypt would attest to the fact that were it not for another treachery by this other set of north African opposition Gor would have knocked out Zamalek from the continental campaign.

This is a story I have written about in the past and will one day write extensively about once more in the future. The gist of it was that Gor went to Cairo prepared with their own food plus a cook in the late Ochido Kamukunji.

This was so the Egyptian side would not spike our food and the wisdom of this move was to be seen on that Friday afternoon when Gor held firm until the Sudanese referee started making dubious calls. At the end of it he abandoned the match, an action which a biased Caf sitting in Cairo blamed on Gor and heavily penalised us.