Player Profile: Matthew Mendes de Oliveira (Kearsney College)
The player with number seven on his back was the last line of defence. He walked to the halfway line, eyes tracking the ball. Then, without warning, he burst into life.
One moment he was assisting on the left wing, then he was causing turnovers in the middle of the park and charging down the opposition’s defenders.
He was everywhere, supporting, defending, attacking and pressing.
It was in one of those presses that he dispossessed a defender, carried the ball into the D, and unleashed a shot at goal.
Unleashed is the proper term, the only word that encapsulates that moment, because the young man in the number seven shirt, Kearsney College‘s Matthew Mendes de Oliveira, does not take shots, he unleashes them. He swings the stick with all of himself, and when he makes contact, the ball screams towards the goal, propelled by all of his hopes and all of the love he has for hockey and life and the moment.
The goalkeeper made a save, but Trent Jessop collected the rebound and slotted the ball past him. KwaZulu-Natal Coastal had scored their first goal in the third and fourth place playoffs at the SASHOC U18 National Week. It turned out to be the only goal of the contest.
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The kitchen is the heart of the home. It is also central to Matthew Mendes de Oliveira’s development as a hockey player. It was the last room of the house that he stepped into before heading into the backyard, where he learned the game, competing against his mother, Phillippa, and his older sister, Daniela.
Mendes de Oliveira was born into a sporting family. His father played rugby and water polo, and his maternal grandfather played tennis, cricket, and baseball at provincial level. He inherited their love for ball sports.
“Teachers at school used to say when he was sitting in a lesson, Matthew would be staring outside at whatever ball sport was being played. If there was a ball sport outside, he was more interested in that,” Phillippa shared.
It was from his mother that he picked up his love for hockey. She played hockey at school and after Dani picked it up at primary school, it became the family pastime. Phillippa spent countless afternoons teaching her children everything she could about the game.
“She taught us how to bully (the old-fashioned start to the game),” Dani, who plays for the SA national team and is a part of the Stellenbosch University and Western Province sides, explained.
It is also in the Mendes de Oliveira kitchen that one will find the principles that guide Matthew Mendes de Oliveira. The family has a chalkboard with their family values written there. The words perseverance, tenacity, loyalty, and humility have been there for years. They are all Mendes de Oliveira has seen. They are a legacy the family inherited from Mendes de Oliveira’s paternal grandfather.
“Those values have always been important for us; they remind us that you never give up. So, even if things aren’t going so well, you push through and don’t give up,” Matthew said.
His great-grandfather was a newspaper seller in Portugal, but he worked hard and, eventually, earned himself three degrees. “I think it’s about having that drive to push through difficult times,” Phillippa said.
No member of their family is a better example of those traits than Matthew. His role models are Jamie Dwyer and Muhammad Ali.
Hockey Hall of Famer Dwyer is one of the most decorated hockey players from Down Under. However, it is not his accomplishments that draw Mendes de Oliveira to him, rather it is the former’s resilience against hardship and his never-say-die attitude. The same applies to Ali.
“They had quite humble beginnings. They came from tough times and were able to make themselves who they are. They were just hard workers and they also appealed to me with the way they presented themselves and the way they went about things,” Mendes de Oliveira explained.
According to the rest of his family, Mendes de Oliveira plays hockey with little regard for his self-preservation. In 2023, he was injured at the provincial trials, taking a knock that fractured his gums.
A dentist ruled that he had to take things easy for the next six weeks. Another knock, no matter how minor, left him at the risk of losing his front row of teeth and surgery was a possibility, too.
However, after captaining the KZN Coastal u16 side to inter-provincial gold the previous year, Mendes de Oliviera felt that he would be a key member of the u18 side, and they would benefit from his playing. He was adamant, he was not going to stay at home.
Knowing that trying to stand in his way was a futile exercise, Phillippa looked for ways to make it possible for him to travel. They modified an airsoft mask, added a layer of foam for extra protection, and he was ready to go. He produced one of his best campaigns that year.
Now 18, his is prepared to put his body on the line to prevent a goal, score a goal, and to make sure his team wins. He was doing so when he played for the u12 side at Highbury Prep, he’s been doing the same this season for Kearsney College and the KZN Coastal team.
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There was less than a minute left in the match. Paul Roos had arrived at the Founders Festival in early March not only undefeated, but they were yet to concede a goal at the event. The visitors led 1-0, and they looked certain to keep another clean sheet. As time ticked away, Kearsney launched one final attack on the Paul Roos goal. Unsurprisingly, Mendes de Oliveira was at the heart of that foray. It resulted in a penalty corner.
“Matthew scored a drag flick to level the score at 1-1, and I think how the goal was scored and what it meant made the moment so sweet. It was quite a special moment. And it also meant that we were unbeaten at our home festival,” said Ashley Kemp, the Kearsney College coach.
It was a sign of how things would be for the rest of the 2024 season for Kearsney. Mendes de Oliveira carried the team on his shoulders.
It was the sort of thing Kemp had learned to expect from his captain. Through their 2024 campaign, Mendes de Oliveira scored last-minute efforts, conjured up brilliant equalisers, and inspired his teammates to find an extra burst of energy to keep going, even when all seemed lost.
The two started working together when the latter was 16 and, even back then, Mendes de Oliveira was the best player in the first team.
“It’s not often that you get to have a player of Matt’s stature and quality in a schoolboy setting, and a lot of the time when you do get a player of his quality, you just kind of need to sit back and marvel at the quality,” Kemp said.
“I’m all about hard work. I’m not a flashy player. I like to pride myself on the hard work that I do,” Mendes de Oliveira said when asked to describe himself as a player.
It is a description that Kemp agrees with, but he added hyperbole by stating that Mendes de Oliveira puts in “120 percent effort in the gym, 120 percent effort on the training field, and 120 percent effort on matchday.”
The mentor refused to take credit for this, saying: “It’s hard for me to grow such a quality player in the short period of time that I have worked with him. I’ve coached Matt now for two years and a lot of the time my coaching is all about challenging him and testing his ability as opposed to really teaching him anything.
“I think because he is such a quality player, he brings a lot of quality to my training sessions and raises the level of my training sessions, so I find myself having to constantly just challenge his level and see how far I can push him, as opposed to really teaching him anything.”
Mendes de Oliveira’s development on the Astro is a result of his home and his early club hockey years, the player reckoned.
“My early years of club hockey were quite tough at the beginning. I was lucky enough to have a few guys to help me. [South African international] Jethro Eustice was one of them. He got me to play club hockey, and he and the other guys were tough on me, and I think that helped me in a lot of ways,” he explained.
Eustice and company taught him the value of taking responsibility for his game and that of the players around him. It is a quality that he has carried with him as he developed through different age groups. It is a quality that led Michael Baker and Cameron Mackay to bestow provincial captaincy upon him.
When asked about his leadership style, Mendes De Oliveira responded: “I try to lead from the front through action. I’m not the greatest motivational speaker, but I always try to hold myself in that way.”
In his understated manner, last week, he led the KZN Coastal side to a bronze medal at the SASHOC National Week. And though he couldn’t get his side the gold, the selectors saw enough to know that he deserved to be a part of the South African Schools side for a second year in succession.
Next year, he will be a part of the Maties’ team and fighting hard to realise his dream of representing South Africa at international level.
