King Kama, The Man Who Made A Whole Pavilion To “Lean ” At Brookfields
If you listened to excited Sierra Leoneans who watched the Leone Stars beat Liberia’s Lone Stars 2-0 in Freetown in 1971, you would have heard. BORBOR, KAMA MAKE THE PAVILION LING TIDAY.
It is one of the legends of Sierra Leone soccer, like the story of Balogun Thunder and Goaler Queen.
They said that when Kama trapped the ball with his feet, maneuvered, started beating the Liberians one by one , dribbling in on the goal on the FSSG end of the stadium, the pavilion on the Congo Cross bridge end leaned to the left with thrilled spectators. Some people said they actually saw the pavilion leaning. But it was all legend. The physical structure did not lean. But the kolay man dem actually leaned to the left and if you were at the Ascension Town cemetery end pavilion, it looked to you in your mind’s eyes like the pavilion actually leaned. That was how King Kama captivated the crowd.
I watched the match but I was in the grand pavilion , which was next to the pavilion that reportedly leaned and given the trajectory of my line of vision I could not have seen it happen.
Some people however said it was not a one day event. They said whenever Kama played 7 and dribbled from that wing , the pavilion would appear to lean when the crowd surged forward .
I did not see the stadium lean but one thing I saw that day was remarkable goals by King Kama that I will never forget.
Kama scored the first goal while sitting on the ground, having lost his balance during a goal mouth scramble . The crowd was yelling for a goal. They wanted us to beat Liberia because the Lone Stars had defeated us 3-1 in the first leg in Monrovia and our players complained that angry Liberian spectators had manhandled them. Everybody wanted victory so when Kama lost his balance after being put through , the crowd yelled , thinking it was a missed chance.
But in the scramble that followed , with desperate Liberian defenders fighting to clear the ball, Kama, sitting on the ground, swiveled and skilfully hooked the ball past Christopher Nippay, the goalkeeper. The whole stadium erupted.
He scored another cheeky goal to make it 2-0.
Kama was not only good with his feet. His chest was part of his arsenal. He had that uncanny ability to use his chest to trap or pass the ball. And when Kama had trapped that ball with his chest and switched the ball to his feet, what followed next was trouble. He was typical Rudd Van Nistelrooy or Ibrahimovich once he got into that goalmouth. Famous African goalkeepers like Karamokoh Janneh of Senegal, Christopher Nippay of Liberia, Camara Morlaye of Guinea, Rigogo of Nigeria, Robert Mensah of Ghana shook his hands after Kama scored against them.
He was also called Kama The Hammer because typically he hammered home shots.
The Kama Dumbuya story cannot be told in one article.
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