Happy birthday to an old soul - Lucky Stylinaou

 

I saw on Facebook that it’s Lucky Stylianou’s birthday today.

I remember Lucky from my days at Wits University, and he had clearly been there a while when I arrived, which makes him older than me, although I don’t know what his age is exactly. But he’s an old soul, no question.

In my days as editor of the School Sport supplement of the Saturday Star I felt we needed to run a weekly column by a coach. I tried out a few and Lucky Stylianou, the former Kaizer Chiefs player and youth coach, who was teaching at Saheti School was the one that stuck.

It was a stroke of luck for us. For the next five years he sent us an article very week and it turned out he was far more than just a good technical coach, he was deep thinker about the role of sport in the development of children. His columns got a great response from readers. I know he has gathered the best of them into a book that hasn’t been published yet, it really should be.

One of the women who worked with Lucky at Saheti told me once that the problem with him was that, like most Greek men, he saw himself as a direct successor to the ancient Greek philosophers and he looked at the world though that lens.

I don’t know about that, but I do know that he has a philosophical, long-game view on winning and losing and an educational ethos that resonates with me perfectly.

It was an incident involving Lucky as a coach some years before, that was one of the events that stands out in my school sport memories. It was at a primary schools soccer tournament at Crawford College in Benrose. Lucky was there with the Saheti team.

The final, between two other schools, ended in a draw and was still deadlocked after extra time, so in the gathering gloom, it went into a penalty shootout, as the tournament regulations stipulated. At the end of two rounds of spot kicks the scores were still even so it went into a third, and then a fourth. By then the 12 year-old players were so emotional and nervous that the first four kicks were missed, and the fifth one didn’t even reach the goalkeeper.

Those children were clearly overwhelmed. Then an incensed Lucky stepped up out of the crowd. He called the boys off the field and told the organisers that it was enough. He reminded them that these were only children and told them if they had to award a cup, the teams could share it, but there would be no more penalties taken that day. They, somewhat shame-facedly, agreed.

It was quite remarkable. I became a Lucky Stylianou fan that day and it had nothing to do with the fact that he had played 250 games for Kaizer Chiefs.

A number of years later, Lucky invited me to attend a Chiefs game in a suite at Soccer City. The way in which he was welcomed there and the greetings and selfie requests he got from fans bore testimony to the impact he made at the club.

And on the way in, on the quiet, he dropped off a couple of bags of groceries to be handed to former team mates who had fallen on hard times.

An old soul celebrated his birthday this week.