Raised in gang-ridden Bishop Lavis on the Cape Flats in the Western Cape Province, he avoided a life of crime and instead focused on football. The 24-year-old was signed by Orlando Pirates this year and now finds himself in the Bafana Bafana squad for the Africa Cup of Nations tournament in Morocco. A friend and former teammate in the school’s team, Lee Cloete, says Appollis already displayed exceptional talent at school level. He describes Appollis’ performance in a knock-out match they played in the 2018 Kay Motsepe Schools Competition, as nothing short of marvelous.
“That morning after being rubbed and treated he woke up and he told me Lee, today I’m scoring a hat-trick with my left foot because his right thigh at that moment was so painful he could barely walk on it and for me that’s actually the highlight of Oswin Appollis’s football career because in that given time it took only 30 minutes for him to actually prove to me that what he spoke and what he felt at that time, he could achieve by scoring that hat trick in 30 minutes,” he said.
–SABC–
