Andile Mpisane ‘not a player that pulls out of training sessions’

Royal AM coach John Maduka has given an impression that the club’s chairman-cum player Andile Mpisane is putting his shoulder to the wheel behind the scenes, hence he rarely made the match-day squad in their scoreless draw versus Kaizer Chiefs.

Mpisane, 22, ended up as an unused substitute as Royal managed to hold Chiefs to a goalless draw, despite being heavily dominated, at FNB Stadium on Saturday. The Royal chairman, who’s also a recording artist, is yet to make his senior debut, albeit he’s played a few matches in the reserve league.

In most of the DStv Diski Challenge (DDC) games he’s featured in, Mpisane, who’s the youngest club chairman in the PSL as well, never missed a chance to showboat. “He works, he works. He finishes training sessions whenever we are doing conditionings,” Maduka said of Mpisane.

“He’s not a player that pulls out [of training sessions]. He might look the way he looks [he looks a little bit out of shape] but whenever we do training sessions, he does finish training sessions. The conditioning part is very, very tough but he does manage to finish.

“Last week we used him when we played a friendly against AmaZulu...he played about seventy, seventy-five minutes and he never looked like a player that can get tired, so he’s still part of the team.”