Hanover Park chairman Reiduwaan Anthony will keep his fingers crossed that his “family affair” connection could take the club to newer heights – just as it did in the past with the very successful Premier United.
Therefore, Wanie as Anthony is better known, brought back one of the most successful coaches in his club’s history in the form of his younger brother, Shamiel Anthony.
Shamiel has an impeccable track record with the club that includes four Coke Cup titles with Premier United and another two with Hanover Park.
He was on the losing finalist on three occasions with Premier and two runners-up with Hanover Park where he wants directly involved.
It is also fair to say that Sam, as he is better known is also, was never really gone but rather in the background offering advice and sharing his experience with the club’s management.
Sam confessed that his ‘break’ was much needed to get a better perspective and outlook as to how he could change things around to the benefit of the club.
“Sometimes you get trapped into the situation and you are then more focussed on what is going wrong in South African football than anything else,” Sam explained. “You need to readjust and find your feet again.”
The Brasse Vannie Park showed loads of promise in its debut season in this Second Division last year, but unfortunately did not have enough in their tank – under Sam’s predecessor Andrew Paqueno – to get them over the line.
The latter was also responsible for Hanover Park’s promotion to the Motsepe League after he won the Third Division title in the 2021/22 season.
Sam, who has now been tasked to go one further, has already received high praise and compliments on his ‘return’ to the club from the Hanover Park faithful.
He is however under no illusion of the mammoth task that awaits him in this season’s campaign and has already identified a few key areas where he wants to implement change.
“My idea is more to try and work with young coaches that have the potential to take it further, you know. It’s more of creating that because I see there is a void in that, and most communities don’t have the level of professionalism.
“So I worked with Mark Faroe, a friend of mine and I worked with Peter Kirsten and those are the types of guys I want to see going forward.
“Obviously with a bit of experience and guidance I allowed them a lot of scope and rope, getting their thoughts on players obviously you don’t play against yourself, you know.
“There are so many players out there that want an opportunity but obviously we need to go back to the NFD as soon as possible,” Sam added further.
Apart from the Manchester City’s of this league in Clarewood JPM, Hanover Park FC was another club that could afford to pay some of their top and senior players very decent salaries for this league.
Sam is aware that this approach does not necessarily guarantee success of any sorts – as proved last season when they had players like Taariq Losper amongst other in their midst but without anything to show for their efforts.
“We are looking to put a few fresh faces in. What happened last year was that we over-extended ourselves to get a good enough squad on paper ourselves and it sort of didn’t make financial sense at that point in time. It is the sort of thing that when we speak as management to look at are there talent. We have to also look at the younger ones and see what quality we have” Sam concluded.
