It’s usually very exciting watching a football match on TV in your favourite bar, where revellers seem to enjoy a game like they are at the stadium.
There are actually fans who’ll impress you that watching a match on TV is more gratifying since there are all these replays in slow motion which enable fans to enjoy further the wizardry of their heroes and reassess what one might have missed due to one form of distraction or other.
Give you a genuine reason to insult the “bought” ref.
You’re often distracted when you turn your head to holler at fans seated behind you and criticising your team, which is not even playing!
Or being on the phone with the like of your ndugu, Esaya, who’d be giving you an “expert” analysis of the match so far.
Esaya would, for instance, offer an insightful review of the award-winning goal (ha!) scored by Simba’s Cloutus Chota Chama, a tick-tack strike that left Yanga’s normally indomitable goalkeeper gawking. It doesn’t matter that like him, you’re also watching the match!
So, by the time the self-acclaimed analyst Esaya hangs up, Yanga’s Prince Dube has reduced the 2-0 difference between his team and Yanga to 2-1!
By the 56th minute, Yanga has equalised, and the Jangwani side fans almost die with joy. When the Kenyan ref blows the final whistle, the scoreboard reads '2-2'.
Yanga fans are all agog in celebration, jumping up and down like madmen.
It’s like their team has won.
The teasing from the Yanga fans is unanimous: Simba are a hopeless lot. Says one of their craziest fanatics here that we call "Ustaz",
“How do you lead 2-0 by half-time and at the end of the match, and you and us are 2-2? Wallah, you people have no team!”
In another match played on May 6 at Arusha’s Amri Abeid Stadium, on the pitch are Azam FC and TRA Football Club.
The TRA side are considered the obvious underdogs, while their opponents are highly valued due to their good track record.
Actually Azam, at position No. 3 in the league standings, are championship cup contenders.
Football, however, can be a strange phenomenon with cruel outcomes.
The TRA turn the tables, and, contrary to everybody’s expectation, the Ice Cream Makers are made to run in circles, and at the blow of the final whistle, the scoreboard reads, TRA 4, Azam 1. Unbelievable? Maybe, but that was it!
Throughout the TV-watching time, arguments were so hot, not about the battle between Azam and TRA, but about Yanga and Simba!
“TRA has been bribed to boost Simba…One way to boost Simba is to make TRA and others' teams beat Azam and make sure Azam doesn’t rise. Now Simba must help other teams to beat Azam who are poised to overtake Simba!” claims a pro-Yanga “analyst” Joachim.
He’s immediately shouted down by this crazed Simba fan we all call Balotelli, the loudest Simba cheerleader at Family.
“Upuuzi mtupu!” shouts Baloteli, adding, "Who told you we’re scared of Azam… we aren’t even scared by Yanga because the medicine for their unfair wins has been found!” rants Baloteli.
“What medicine? Tell us, what medicine?” shouts a Yanga fan.
“Foreign refs", responds Balotelli.
In a word, at this joint right now, there are more noisy arguments, charges and counter-charges than match watching. Most of these, needless to say, are false, but who cares? That’s Bongo football for you, and we enjoy it that way.
