Former Orlando Pirates midfielder Sepeke Manamela has detailed how his frustrations at the Soweto giants pushed him straight to the recesses of the brown bottle as a coping mechanism.
Pointing out the main reason he could not reach his full potential at Pirates, Manamela fingered a former coach of the side under whom he never really got going.
"I hated football for quite some time," goes his impassioned reflection as he sits down for this interview with KickOff.com.
"I felt I didn't reach my full potential and believe I could have done things differently to achieve that. All the coaches I worked with recognized my talent, except for Owen Da Gama.
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"While the other coaches were trying to work on different aspects of my game, I felt like they were against me. It made me feel like a black sheep and demoralized me, leading to choices I didn't want to make, including drinking alcohol. Before that, I wasn't a fan of alcohol.
"I had aimed to play for two seasons at Pirates and then move overseas - that was my dream. But I grew angry and felt like the coaches didn't like me. My first coach at Pirates was 'Micho' [Milutin Sredojevic], and I had no issues with him. I was just unlucky with injuries. Then came Bibey Mutombo. When he first joined Pirates, he didn't like me, but after I worked hard, he eventually came to appreciate me. Unfortunately, he was soon sacked.
"Mutombo was replaced by Owen, and that's when my troubles began. Things started to change because Owen believes in hard-working players rather than skillful ones. He would never play a skillful player unless he had no choice.
"I remember one day at training, he told Dira Laka, a striker who had joined Pirates from PJ Stars, to play like the late Oscar Ntwagae. We were practicing corner kicks when he said to Laka: 'You must be Ntwagae!' That player was never given a fair chance at Pirates. Laka was among the top strikers, yet during training, he was made to pretend to be Oscar Ntwagae, a defender.
"I once went to trials at Silver Stars, where Owen used to coach. I spent three weeks training with them in Modderfontein. When he saw me at Pirates, he said: 'Don't I know you from somewhere?'" he adds.
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Manamela says signing for a team like Pirates meant he had the talent needed, but that despite training hard throughout the week, he still wouldn't make the team for weekend matches.
"I ended up playing in local tournaments in Soshanguve, while Pirates played their league games elsewhere.
"I used to take my career very seriously and had a strong dislike for alcohol, but my frustrations eventually led to drinking. I started to feel inadequate and thought I wasn't a good footballer. At that time, I didn't have anyone to motivate me."
In the spirit of Fair Play that KickOff.com espouses and lives by, Da Gama was given an opportunity to respond to these allegations. Click on the following link to access his response: 'Why turn to alcohol?' ODG hits back at former Pirates player