The Paramount Chief of the Talensi Traditional Area, Tongo-Raana Kolbilsong Namalteng has shared an interesting story about his young age and how he was given the name ‘Baba Yara’ by his colleagues because of his envious football skills.
The story told by the Talensi Paramount Chief was so interesting, but unfortunately, his love of playing football was disorganized because his father believes football at the time was an unproductive venture and a waste of children’s time.
I have a small story to tell, when I was growing up very young, my father was working down south on the railways in Dunkwa, a very Cosmopolitan town in the central region.
The short story of the Chief captured how the Paramount Chief at a young age always jumped out through the window with the assistance of his friends especially anytime the father who then was a railway worker always locked him inside the room and went to work all just to prevent him from going out to play football with his friends.
Tongo Raana, in his short story, was making a point that football has changed for good. According to him, in the past those who played football had nothing to boast about unlike today, football has become an attractive profession to every family.
Below is short interesting story about the Paramount Chief of the Talensi Traditional Area, Tongo-Raana Kolbilsong Namalteng
“I grew up playing football very well and called me Baba Yara at that time. I was the captain of the children’s team in the railways quarters area and every Saturday or weekend we played matches. And being the captain I was required to be present in all the matches but my father was an air service man who wouldn’t want to hear anything about football. So, on Saturday, because he knew I will go and play football, he will lock me in his room and imprisoned me. But because he will leave for work my football friends will come and knock on the window and ask me to open the window so that I will pass through the window and join them to go and play football.
This was happening and anytime we have to play a match, I have to pass through the window to go and play football and they have scouts watching the way for me. So, if my father was returning to the house, they will quickly inform me and I will immediately take off at full speed and go and jump through the window, enter, and lie down as if I hadn’t gone anywhere.
But this man was so clever, what he will do is, first of all, to come and inspect my legs and you know this was railways, the whole ground was black and look at me, a fair person like me will go and play football with black shorts what do you think i will get? All my body will be dusty. So, I will just jump on top of the roof, there was a path there and there was some cane he kept for me, he will take it and cane me well.
Now, why was this man doing this? in our time, football wasn’t attractive and it has nothing. So, why would you stop learning and be playing football and they call you Baba Yara? He didn’t care about that and indeed, the name Baba Yara was one of the footballers in Ghana in the 60s but they didn’t get anything out of football”.
In fact, most of the footballers in the past, never gain anything but as time went by and as time changed, today football is seen as a profession, football is seen as something that can grow fast as a kind of full event that can help everybody. Therefore, I am giving you this story of mine to tell you that, today’s football is different from the football of our time”. He concludes
Source: Apexnewsgh.com/Ghana
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