Goalkeeper Robert Mensah
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27th October, 2011
HOW ROBERT MENSAH INVADED MY HOUSE 40 YEARS AGO!
I heard the news that Ghana’s leading goalkeeper, Robert Mensah, was dead, before my two boys woke up that morning of 2 November 1971.
The previous 24 hours had been hell: they’d asked me, every minute or so, with pitiful, anxious faces, whether I had heard anything new about Robert Mensah’s condition. (He’d been stabbed with a broken bottle by an electrician called Melfah, in a brawl at an akpeteshie joint, “Credo”, at Community 7, Tema.)
The rumour was that the pub brawl was over a woman (what else!) But details were sketchy. Questions were being asked all over the place, and no-one was providing any concrete answers. It was reported that the quarrel was with three chaps, and that Melfah had followed Robert when Robert left the pub, and stabbed him outside. Was this true?
A crucial African Champions match was coming up between Robert Mensah’s team, Asante Kotoko, and Great Olympics. It was rare for 2 clubs from the same country to play against each other in that competition, but Kotoko was defending champions and Olympics the new Ghana league champions. So they had to play against each other. Or that was how I understood it.
So, was Mensah’s stabbing an Olympics-inspired assassination? Why would Olympics do this to a Kotoko man, when the rivalry between Oly and Kotoko had never been as bitter as that between Kotoko and Olympics' real phobia -- Hearts of Oak? Anyway, since when did assassination become a part of Ghanaian football? No answer.
In my house, as I have mentioned, a funereal silence had imposed itself. Kofi Amoako Duodu, then aged only nine, loved Robert Mensah to bits. Photos of Robert hung over his bed. I felt guilty whenever Kotoko played an important match and I didn’t take him to watch it. And he’d infected Akwasi, who was only six, with the Kotoko/Robert Mensah bug.
This loyalty to a a particular club was almost embarrassing to me, for I myself, in order to be able to write about football without bias, loftily refused to support any club and reserved my loyalty for the Black Stars. But your heart can never be too far away from where your kids’ hearts are, and I once drove them all the way to Lome to watch Kotoko play.
Now, we knew that Robert Mensah had been taken to hospital and had undergone an emergency operation. But details were sketchy about how well he was doing. Whereas in some places, the condition of a star like that would have been reported in bulletins issued periodically by the hospital, here, there was nothing. Just a vague hope created by wish-fulfilment, that he was “recovering”.
He in fact died at 2.30 a.m. on 2 November 1971. As soon as I heard about it, I knew that I, like “Houston”, had “a problem.” How was I to convey the news to the kids?
For it was unbelievable that Robert Mensah had died. His whole reputation had been built around the fact that he exuded vitality and lack of fear. The best illustration of this quality in him was that if his team-mates disputed with the referee over a penalty awarded against them, Robert Mensah would go and disperse the players, take the ball, place it on the spot, and walk laconically back to stand between the posts.
He would then indicate that the opposing side should shoot the penalty. Invariably, by being so impervious to fear, he unnerved them and they either shot wide, or kicked the ball feebly enough for him to be able to catch it. Or, as in the following instance, they kicked the ball "over the bar".
It was during an African Club Championship final match with Englebert of Leopoldville, in the Congo Democratic Republic (then Zaire) in 1970. A biased referee awarded a penalty against Kotoko, when Kotoko was leading by 2 goals to 1. Fed up with the referee’s partiality, officials of Kotoko and some of the players were minded to boycott the match. Their resentment had been fuelled by the fact that the Zairian authorities had – so the story goes -- housed the Kotoko team in a classroom full of mosquitoes, instead of at a proper hotel.
Annoyed that the officials wanted to “run away” from a penalty when he, Robert Mensah was in the goal, Robert went and talked harshly to them. Then he took the ball and calmly placed it on the spot.
Next, he went and stood in the middle of the goal. Waiting.
There is a story, which I haven’t been able to verify, that Robert, at one point, took off his famous checked black-and-white cap, which he always wore, and tapped the crossbar as well as the two posts with it.
The Zairians went ballistic at this. They suspected that Robert had put juju in the cap and that once he had the cap on his head, they would not be able to score with the penalty they'd been awarded. So they demanded that Robert take off the cap. Robert refused.
There was another deadlock.
But then, a Kotoko elder came, and in his turn, replayed the words Robert had used back to him: Didn't you say we shouldn't run away?" he asked. Then he intoned: “Yeye Asante Kotoko – yenim ko oo, yennim adwanier oo!”. (“We are Asante Kotoko -- we only know how to fight, not how to run away!”)
Robert was moved by this. He took the cap off his head and threw it on the grass. A Zairian soldier rushed up, picked the cap up and tore its lining open with the bayonet on his rifle. He looked in it for the juju he believed Robert had hidden inside it. He found nothing. He slunk off with a silly look on his face.
The ball was now placed on the spot. The Zairian penalty specialist, Kagogo came and stood behind the ball.
Robert Mensah looked Kagogo up and down. Scornfully.
Kagogo kicked the ball.
The ball sailed over the bar! Kotoko had won and become African club champions.
The late famous journalist, Moses Danquah, told me (I don't know where he got it from!) that after the ball sailed over the bar, the Zairian dictator, Mobutu Seseseko, was so furious he left the stadium.
Anyway, Kotoko brought the cup home to Ghana. And Robert Mensah’s stature grew even bigger.
And now Robert was dead. I needed to make sure that my boys were not over-shocked by hearing it from anyone else but me. The method I adopted to lessen their distress, was to be as clinical about Robert’s condition as possible. Although I knew he was already dead, I went into their room, and talking to them as if they were grown men, I took on the role of a surgeon, and explained the type of operation that Robert had undergone.
Melfah had stabbed Robert with a broken bottle, I said. Because a broken bottle would have had jagged ends, Robert’s injuries would have consisted of multiple ruptures in the abdomen, which would be very difficult to stitch properly. Apart from the complicated sewing-up process, the success of the operation also depended on other factors -- how much blood Robert had lost before he reached the hospital.
I was then asked: “So you’re saying, Daddy, that he might die?”
I was happy that the awful truth had been brought up up frontally. I replied calmly, “Yes, he might not make it. But we don’t know for sure. It is a matter of luck. ” I then stroked their heads and left the room. I am sure they cried at that point.
Within an hour, I had re-entered their room, shaking my head. I didn't have to say anything. I stroked their heads again, and left the room.
They went to school. But when I picked them up at lunch-time, my wife and I tried our best to lift up their spirits by taking them to the Star Hotel, where we treated them to a special lunch. Kofi has written about all of this, and I shall now let him take over the story.
Kofi Amoako Duodu writes: "Those were our days of legendary glories, when my team, Kumasi Asante Kotoko, trod the 'streets of Utopia'; when the soccer being played was at an unattainable level -- scripts written for the 'Kumasi Golden Books' by the special grace of God Almighty Himself....
And yet in spite of all this, when my father would ask me: ''Kofi, what will you be when you grow up?'', I'd reply: "I will be a 'gow-kipper' and he'd say 'goal-keeper not gow-kipper'! Yes, the aura of Robert Mensah was of divine proportions. People actually went to the stadium purposely to watch Bob.
I finally got to watch Bob live myself in 1971 in a game with Great Olympics, who were league champs. So it was that it was right in front of me that Robert took Jones's shot on his belly, as though it was nothing, and the whole stadium burst out laughing. Unfortunately for me, my man was not put to any real test.
But I was there and experienced the real meaning of 'red-red'. This was the only time I watched 'Uncle Bob' in living colour...
# It is my birthday, and my step mum,Madam Beryl Karikari, throws a party and little do we know the bombshell she has in store for us 60's kids.
How she got it I know not, but a carpet was spread on our garage floor and with the white wall making a perfect screen, a projector was switched on from a table behind us and what did we see? The whole 90- minute reel of Asante Kotoko vs. Englebert in Kinshasa! I mean, my step mum 'murdered' me for eternity....
Biofacts Robert Mensah:
Year of birth -- 1939;
Date of death 2 November 1971 (aged 31–32)
The previous 24 hours had been hell: they’d asked me, every minute or so, with pitiful, anxious faces, whether I had heard anything new about Robert Mensah’s condition. (He’d been stabbed with a broken bottle by an electrician called Melfah, in a brawl at an akpeteshie joint, “Credo”, at Community 7, Tema.)
The rumour was that the pub brawl was over a woman (what else!) But details were sketchy. Questions were being asked all over the place, and no-one was providing any concrete answers. It was reported that the quarrel was with three chaps, and that Melfah had followed Robert when Robert left the pub, and stabbed him outside. Was this true?
A crucial African Champions match was coming up between Robert Mensah’s team, Asante Kotoko, and Great Olympics. It was rare for 2 clubs from the same country to play against each other in that competition, but Kotoko was defending champions and Olympics the new Ghana league champions. So they had to play against each other. Or that was how I understood it.
So, was Mensah’s stabbing an Olympics-inspired assassination? Why would Olympics do this to a Kotoko man, when the rivalry between Oly and Kotoko had never been as bitter as that between Kotoko and Olympics' real phobia -- Hearts of Oak? Anyway, since when did assassination become a part of Ghanaian football? No answer.
In my house, as I have mentioned, a funereal silence had imposed itself. Kofi Amoako Duodu, then aged only nine, loved Robert Mensah to bits. Photos of Robert hung over his bed. I felt guilty whenever Kotoko played an important match and I didn’t take him to watch it. And he’d infected Akwasi, who was only six, with the Kotoko/Robert Mensah bug.
This loyalty to a a particular club was almost embarrassing to me, for I myself, in order to be able to write about football without bias, loftily refused to support any club and reserved my loyalty for the Black Stars. But your heart can never be too far away from where your kids’ hearts are, and I once drove them all the way to Lome to watch Kotoko play.
Now, we knew that Robert Mensah had been taken to hospital and had undergone an emergency operation. But details were sketchy about how well he was doing. Whereas in some places, the condition of a star like that would have been reported in bulletins issued periodically by the hospital, here, there was nothing. Just a vague hope created by wish-fulfilment, that he was “recovering”.
He in fact died at 2.30 a.m. on 2 November 1971. As soon as I heard about it, I knew that I, like “Houston”, had “a problem.” How was I to convey the news to the kids?
For it was unbelievable that Robert Mensah had died. His whole reputation had been built around the fact that he exuded vitality and lack of fear. The best illustration of this quality in him was that if his team-mates disputed with the referee over a penalty awarded against them, Robert Mensah would go and disperse the players, take the ball, place it on the spot, and walk laconically back to stand between the posts.
He would then indicate that the opposing side should shoot the penalty. Invariably, by being so impervious to fear, he unnerved them and they either shot wide, or kicked the ball feebly enough for him to be able to catch it. Or, as in the following instance, they kicked the ball "over the bar".
It was during an African Club Championship final match with Englebert of Leopoldville, in the Congo Democratic Republic (then Zaire) in 1970. A biased referee awarded a penalty against Kotoko, when Kotoko was leading by 2 goals to 1. Fed up with the referee’s partiality, officials of Kotoko and some of the players were minded to boycott the match. Their resentment had been fuelled by the fact that the Zairian authorities had – so the story goes -- housed the Kotoko team in a classroom full of mosquitoes, instead of at a proper hotel.
Annoyed that the officials wanted to “run away” from a penalty when he, Robert Mensah was in the goal, Robert went and talked harshly to them. Then he took the ball and calmly placed it on the spot.
Next, he went and stood in the middle of the goal. Waiting.
There is a story, which I haven’t been able to verify, that Robert, at one point, took off his famous checked black-and-white cap, which he always wore, and tapped the crossbar as well as the two posts with it.
The Zairians went ballistic at this. They suspected that Robert had put juju in the cap and that once he had the cap on his head, they would not be able to score with the penalty they'd been awarded. So they demanded that Robert take off the cap. Robert refused.
There was another deadlock.
But then, a Kotoko elder came, and in his turn, replayed the words Robert had used back to him: Didn't you say we shouldn't run away?" he asked. Then he intoned: “Yeye Asante Kotoko – yenim ko oo, yennim adwanier oo!”. (“We are Asante Kotoko -- we only know how to fight, not how to run away!”)
Robert was moved by this. He took the cap off his head and threw it on the grass. A Zairian soldier rushed up, picked the cap up and tore its lining open with the bayonet on his rifle. He looked in it for the juju he believed Robert had hidden inside it. He found nothing. He slunk off with a silly look on his face.
The ball was now placed on the spot. The Zairian penalty specialist, Kagogo came and stood behind the ball.
Robert Mensah looked Kagogo up and down. Scornfully.
Kagogo kicked the ball.
The ball sailed over the bar! Kotoko had won and become African club champions.
The late famous journalist, Moses Danquah, told me (I don't know where he got it from!) that after the ball sailed over the bar, the Zairian dictator, Mobutu Seseseko, was so furious he left the stadium.
Anyway, Kotoko brought the cup home to Ghana. And Robert Mensah’s stature grew even bigger.
And now Robert was dead. I needed to make sure that my boys were not over-shocked by hearing it from anyone else but me. The method I adopted to lessen their distress, was to be as clinical about Robert’s condition as possible. Although I knew he was already dead, I went into their room, and talking to them as if they were grown men, I took on the role of a surgeon, and explained the type of operation that Robert had undergone.
Melfah had stabbed Robert with a broken bottle, I said. Because a broken bottle would have had jagged ends, Robert’s injuries would have consisted of multiple ruptures in the abdomen, which would be very difficult to stitch properly. Apart from the complicated sewing-up process, the success of the operation also depended on other factors -- how much blood Robert had lost before he reached the hospital.
I was then asked: “So you’re saying, Daddy, that he might die?”
I was happy that the awful truth had been brought up up frontally. I replied calmly, “Yes, he might not make it. But we don’t know for sure. It is a matter of luck. ” I then stroked their heads and left the room. I am sure they cried at that point.
Within an hour, I had re-entered their room, shaking my head. I didn't have to say anything. I stroked their heads again, and left the room.
They went to school. But when I picked them up at lunch-time, my wife and I tried our best to lift up their spirits by taking them to the Star Hotel, where we treated them to a special lunch. Kofi has written about all of this, and I shall now let him take over the story.
Kofi Amoako Duodu writes: "Those were our days of legendary glories, when my team, Kumasi Asante Kotoko, trod the 'streets of Utopia'; when the soccer being played was at an unattainable level -- scripts written for the 'Kumasi Golden Books' by the special grace of God Almighty Himself....
And yet in spite of all this, when my father would ask me: ''Kofi, what will you be when you grow up?'', I'd reply: "I will be a 'gow-kipper' and he'd say 'goal-keeper not gow-kipper'! Yes, the aura of Robert Mensah was of divine proportions. People actually went to the stadium purposely to watch Bob.
I finally got to watch Bob live myself in 1971 in a game with Great Olympics, who were league champs. So it was that it was right in front of me that Robert took Jones's shot on his belly, as though it was nothing, and the whole stadium burst out laughing. Unfortunately for me, my man was not put to any real test.
But I was there and experienced the real meaning of 'red-red'. This was the only time I watched 'Uncle Bob' in living colour...
# It is my birthday, and my step mum,Madam Beryl Karikari, throws a party and little do we know the bombshell she has in store for us 60's kids.
How she got it I know not, but a carpet was spread on our garage floor and with the white wall making a perfect screen, a projector was switched on from a table behind us and what did we see? The whole 90- minute reel of Asante Kotoko vs. Englebert in Kinshasa! I mean, my step mum 'murdered' me for eternity....
Biofacts Robert Mensah:
Year of birth -- 1939;
Date of death 2 November 1971 (aged 31–32)
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