The Legend of Orlando Pirates
Where Pirates came from and how they got their name
It was at the suggestion of goalkeeper James ‘Hitler’Sobi that the team took the name Pirates, and the colours and crest of skull and crossbones that exist today have their origins from the 1940 movie ‘Sea Hawk’.
It was the blockbuster of its time, starring matinee idol Errol Flynn and earning four Oscar nominations.
The members of the Orlando Boys Club were captivated, like audiences worldwide.
The genesis of Pirates was a collection of schoolboys who came together to form a team under the auspices of the Orlando Boys Club.
It was place where teenagers from schools across the burgeoning Soweto came together to play table tennis, lift weights and box. But they did not have a football side and the logical step was to form one and seek to play competitively.
They affiliated themselves with the Johannesburg Bantu Football Association (JBFA) and were incorporated into the Umteteli Division’s Sunday League.
They spent five years playing the First Division Saturday League of the JBFA until they won promotion to Jozi’s elite Sunday League in 1945, but it was a single game that suddenly catapulted the club into a formidable force and gave it a profile among supporters.
That was also at the end of World War II, when they beat Sophiatown African Morning Stars in the final of the Senior Knockout Cup, the equivalent of a lower league team today taking out one of the top Premier Soccer League outfits in a major cup final.
At the same time as Pirates won promotion they moved to Young Field, now known as Orlando Stadium, and by the 1950s had already won the SA Robinson Knockout competition three years in a row.
Who were the founders?
The most celebrated of the teenage boys who founded the club was Sam Shabangu, who as ‘Baboon Shepherd’would go onto become one of the club’s greatest players. He was 15 at the time the club was formed, motivated by the leadership of Andries ‘Pele Pele’ Mkwanazi, who was a little older and commanded the respect of the young players. It was at Mkwanazi’s house (Orlando No. 3939) that the club was conceived.
Bethuel Mokgosinyana became their patron and paid for their kit and clothing. He was a self-styled social worker, who came to the township from Brits. He worked at a factory in Booysens but later opened his own butchery and became an influential figure in the South African game.
His home at Orlando East 4503 was also used a gym for the players and where they gathered before games.
