If there was only just enough money to go around when Ellis was growing up, love was never in short supply. BanyanaBanyana
Long-term vision: Banyana coach Desiree Ellis, pictured in Hanover Park, is excited that her players have more opportunities than during her own playing days. ’s lasting education at primary school was in street soccer.
Toe-punts from the feisty young Ellis, never one to be intimidated by her cousins or the midfield heavies from the neighbouring streets, meant the upper of the shoe often flapped away from the sole. Although Ellis wryly remembers Ernest “kept trying for a boy”, she also has fond memories of pilgrimages to Hartleyvale to watch the derby between Cape Town Spurs and Hellenic. “He wrapped his arms around me for protection when we went through the turnstiles,” says Ellis, “and he kept them wrapped around me on the terraces for the whole game.”
Of the four Ellis daughters it was Desiree and Carmelita who graduated with honours from the hard school of street soccer to the university that is the larger game. Both were talented midfielders, although Ellis started out as a bang-them-in striker. Women’s football in the late 1970s and early 1980s had neither the cachet nor the public interest that it does today. It was a ghetto sport, with little sponsorship and precious little interest from either the administrators or the public. Over time the Ellis family virtually took over the running of Athlone Celtic, not because they wanted to but because the task was so thankless no one else wanted it and the club was always in one or another form of distress.
During this time she also began to develop a social conscience, raiding Auntie Susan’s larder and throwing foodstuffs over the fence to help the poor and needy. “It was just tins of food and rice and that sort of thing,” she says nonchalantly. “I didn’t want anyone walking past to go hungry.”If Cape Town Spurs were the local club of choice, Manchester United was the family’s adopted club further afield.
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