Canadian sports television channel Rogers Sports Centre recently had a crew in the country filming a number of football related documentaries in South Africa, amongst the numerous stories that they did while in the country, was a documentary on Kaizer Chiefs which will air on the weekly Soccer Central Show on the Rogers Sports Centre Channel, which is Canada’s equivalent of South Africa’s SuperSport.

The Soccer Central crew made up of former West Ham United and Canadian national team goalkeeper Craig Forrest and producer Daniel Fernandes spent two days with the team and recorded the team at training. In addition the crew was with a group of Chiefs players who embarked on a number of social responsibility exercises in Soweto on Valentines Day.

Fernandes and Forrest joined sixteen Chiefs players as they visited three venues in Soweto starting with the Vutomi I Nyiko Foundation (Life is a Gift), a haven for children with multiple disabilities started in 1999, the Lofentse Girls High School and finally Morris Isaacson High School.

The Soccer central crew were amazed at the popularity of the Chiefs players at each of the venues that they visited, with Fernandes commenting “prior to coming to South Africa I had heard that The Kaizer Chiefs were a really popular team, travelling with them to Soweto I really got to see first hand just how much people admire the Chiefs players and team”.

The professional attitude, helpful and willing nature of the Chiefs players also left a marked impression on Fernandes, who said “every one we dealt with at Chiefs from Marketing Manager Jessica Motaung through to the players were just awesome to work with. I must say that the players were really co-operative and helped us a lot, their assistance really made our work easy”. Fernandes was equally impressed by the facilities at The Amakhosi’s home base in Naturena, “the Kaizer Chiefs village is really impressive the facilities are amongst the best I have seen in the world”.

The soccer central crew headed out to Namibia on Friday in order to give the Canadian audience a broader understanding of football or soccer as they say in Canada, in Southern Africa.

The Soccer Central documentary featuring Chiefs will appear in the next two weeks on the Rogers Sports Centre, and will be aired on a Saturday morning when the Channel screens English Premier League matches. Fernandes has indicated that an audience of around 200 000 viewers, are expected to tune into watch The Amakhosi warm up Canadian television screens in a country that at the moment is experiencing temperatures as low as -20° C.