Most people view me as someone with more passion in football than netball, but little do they know that I also like watching the latter sport.
I first came across the name of Connis Mhone, as one of the sharp and aggressive shooters in netball, about 20 years ago.
I started hearing the name from Lilongwe-based Blue Eagles Sisters and followed her exploits up to Silver Club.
I first saw her in action at Blantyre Youth Centre when she was playing for Admarc Tigresses. That time I was in the company of my then colleague in sports reporting, the late Chimwemwe Festino, who was entrusted with the task of covering netball.
By then I was a special correspondent for basketball and the beauty was that the two sports were sharing the same arena at Blantyre Youth Centre.
Though my attention was glued to basketball but I had a chance to have a glimpse of what was happening in netball.
This is when I appreciated the dazzling skills of netball displayed by the late Connis Mhone, Peace Chawinga, Eleanor Mapulanga, Mary Waya, Emmie Waya and the two Nyanga and Mpoola sisters whose first names I can’t recall.
I was, therefore, not surprised when I heard that Mhone was appointed coach for Under-21 national netball team.
Connis was a fine talent, no doubt about that. She was brought up in a generation when netball was not being played by super stars but hard working and disciplined individuals.
This crop of players managed to take the Queens to the greater heights no wonder they became a world force to reckon with.
If you doubt that, you can go and rewind the events of the Malawi Queens in 90s and early 2000s.
This crop of players was different from the current bunch of indisciplined models masquerading as netball players.
I mean this bunch of netballers who spend more of their time boozing, gossiping and tweeting than training. It is a bunch of hopeless netballers which is a product of a broken association called Nam.
I have all the reasons to respect the late Connis Mhone for the contributions she made to Malawi netball. She never courted controversies in the press and I never saw her grumbling.
It was that spirit of statesmanship that would make her my idol in netball.
I last saw Connis training kids in street netball in Area 23 in Lilongwe last year during the GOtv Netball trophy only to get the shock of my life this week when Thunder Queens player, Joana Kachilika, broke the news to me at Kamuzu Stadium during their morning training session.
May her soul rest in peace. Connis has left a lasting legacy.
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