FEW coaches in South African football divide opinion as much as Gavin Hunt does. There’s no in between with “Huntie”. You either like him or you don’t.
Those who subscribe to the notion that this game of billions is all about putting the ball into the opposition’s net more than they do into yours, consider him a super coach – Hunt having proven himself a winner over decades of being in charge of elite clubs.
Those who believe that soccer is foremost entertainment and are delighted by seeing players knocking the ball about like poetry in motion as they show off their talent in winning matches find teams coached by Hunt an eyesore.
For those of us who have to report on the game, the Capetonian is a type of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
You never really know what to expect with him.
This, after all, is a very moody coach who often makes interviewing him akin to taking out a wisdom tooth – painful.
Hunt can be a nightmare, particularly when his team has lost matches and he resorts to giving monosyllabic answers or responding with condescending questions that would make the inexperienced media hounds unsure of themselves - his demeanor often saying ‘can you just let me go already’.
Get him on a good day though and he is an interviewer’s dream as he opens up so much as to even tell you the kind of tales that should not leave the dressing room.
For the likes of me who have been in the industry as long as he has been a coach, Hunt has time.
To look ahead to the milestone, we met at SuperSport United’s training ground in Sunninghill at Eskom’s Megawatt Park to reminisce about his near three decades long elite league coaching career which sees him going into a milestone match when he leads Matsatsantsa a Pitori in a Betway Premiership clash against Golden Arrows at the Lucas Moripe Stadium this evening.
A four-time Premiership champion coach, Hunt has been an ever-present in the elite league from the 97/98 season and will today be coaching in an unprecedented 1000th match.
Grand as the occasion is going to be, bet on Huntie to approach it nonchalantly.
He has never been one for pomp and ceremony, the 61-year-old former defender whose playing career was cut short by an Achilles injury.
And so he is sure to be resplendent in tracksuit pants and a golf shirt when a ceremonial suit and tie would be most appropriate and perhaps the choice of attire for most coaches for such a milestone match.
Of course he can wear a suit. I remember him wearing one some years ago at the PSL end of season awards ceremony after one of the three championship successes he had with SuperSport.
We dedicated the full edition of our then soccer supplement – Shoot – to the championship victory and one of those we interviewed was his then wife.
He has never forgotten that and we always have a chuckle about it whenever we meet.
Of late, perhaps clearly aware of the junior nature of the soccer media, Huntie tends to bullshit his way through post match interviews giving match analysis so out of tune with the reality of what had just transpired.
The lines ‘we created so many chances’ or ‘we should have won the match’ have become standard answers even in matches when his teams have hardly got a look in.
But they dare not correct him, particularly the sycophantic television interviewers, who often appear to have been instructed not to go what would be deemed the controversial route.
And he has intimidated a few of them, Hunt’s retort to a question often being ‘what did you think’.
In a South African soccer landscape teeming with dull characters though, Huntie’s presence is a welcome relief for those of us who thrive on words.
Unlike many of the current coaches who enjoy speaking about their technical and tactical prowess in media addresses, he is old school and hardly ever gets into those.
On Tuesday after they’d hammered Kaizer Chiefs 4-1, he was asked what it was that he did to be able to tear Amakhosi apart the way they did and he responded as he has many times before.
“This is not the platform to be discussing football,” he said.
In some circles, he is seen as having been left behind by the modern football bus – the fact he has a UEFA A License notwithstanding.
As it is in previous seasons some of his colleagues used to find it odd that he spent time playing golf and that you hardly ever saw him at the stadium unless his team was playing.
This due to the fact that they spent countless hours analyzing the opposition on videos and drinking from the fountains of the likes of Pe Guardiola, Thomas Tuchel and Arsene Wenger even while Huntie was having cold ones at the halfway house ready to hit birdies ala John Daly.
He is a football coach through and through though, and the suggestion he is over the hill – given SuperSport’s wretched run that stretched from the previous campaign to the current – irks him.
“When I hear that I get very offended because I mean… I must be careful what I say here...but, you can put all the managers together and they’ve not won what I won.
“So now you are going to throw me away because of 10 bad games with the other 900 games having been good? You’ve got to be very careful.
“I look all around the world, even in business, and see how we are quick to throw away.
“They say ‘it’s time to go; he must retire’. And then you bring someone in and there’s a little upsurge but then what?
“You can’t be throwing experience away. Maybe if I’ve lost the passion and the desire and love to come and be the first one here (at the training ground) in the morning like I was today - I don’t have to be here first.
“But if I lose that and the passion goes, obviously that’s another thing. But I still want to improve and I still want to win”.
And you can bet he will want to win his milestone match. Not because he wants the plaudits.
But just because that’s who he is - a man driven to do his best in every match.
And whether others agree with the way he does it or not, Huntie is not moved and he never will be.