SYDNEY: Goan origin sports personality José Gonsalves was laid to rest at Mary Mother of Mercy Chapel, Bernet Avenue, Rookwood 2141 NSW in Australia on Saturday.
Born 24 February 1933, known as Joe (ex-Mombasa and Nairobi, Kenya) lost a battle with Alzheimer’s.
In his youth, Joe was a soccer player and athlete in Mombasa at a time when the Kenyan coastal capital was blessed with some of the greatest Goan sporting heroes of his time.
It was sufficient that his teammates looked up to him and those he played against respected his skills. He would have played in the English Premier League, or at least had a shot at it, after soccer coach Ray Batchelor arranged for Joe to trial with a premier club. However, being the only boy in the family, his father asked Joe to put his family first and put an end to the idea of going to the UK.
Two great English players, Sir Stanley Mathews (Wolves, West Brom, various) and Len Shackleton (the Clown Prince of Sunderland) were very impressed with Joe after conducting various soccer clinics in Mombasa.
During the late 1950s and 1960s, there were three soccer teams in Mombasa and the rivalry among the three was as ferocious as it is between the UK soccer giants Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City. Ironically, one of the teams was called Liverpool (name after its UK counterpart, later, for political reasons it was changed to Mwenge) and the others were Feisal and the Mombasa Goan Institute. Matches between any two of these teams attracted hordes of supporters, sometimes even reaching as many as 8,000 or even 10,000.
This may seem small in modern times, but in those days of small populations, it was big time.
