Hunt on cusp of the 1 000-game mark

SuperSport United coach Gavin Hunt will achieve the unprecedented milestone of 1 000 games in charge in the top flight of South African football, keeping up a remarkable legacy of longevity, when his side host Lamontville Golden Arrows in the Betway Premiership on Sunday.

The 60-year-old has coached at a club in the South African league every season since 1998 in a remarkable 27-season run that has included four league championships – three with SuperSport between 2008-2010 and one at Bidvest Wits in 2017.

Hunt has also won cup honours with Moroka Swallows, SuperSport and Wits and took the Cape Town club Seven Stars, where he gave teenager Benni McCarthy his debut, to promotion in the 1998-99 season.

He has also coached at Hellenic, Black Leopards, Moroka Swallows, SuperSport, Wits, Chippa United and Kaizer Chiefs before returning to SuperSport in 2022.

History beckons for Gavin Hunt on Sunday 🥹

He will take charge of his 1000th match as a head coach.

Here's his record after 999 matches 👇#SSDiski pic.twitter.com/KzjGDpho6q

— SuperSport Football ⚽️ (@SSFootball) February 22, 2025

Hunt’s 999th game in charge saw SuperSport upset Chiefs with a 4-1 away win in the Betway Premiership on Tuesday.

Hunt’s three-figure tally is made up of league matches, domestic cup games and matches in African continental club competition. He has won 416 of his 999 games and seen his side score 1291 goals.

There was no break for Hunt after he finished his lengthy playing career, which started with him as a teenager debuting at right back for Hellenic.

“I went straight into coaching. Vasco da Gama was my first club. I got injured in October 1994, snapping my Achilles tendon against AmaZulu. I was going to be out for eight months. When the pre-season started the next January, I was still limping, and despite being at the club for 14 years, Hellenic would not give me a new contract,” Hunt recalled in a previous interview.

AN OPPORTUNITY TO COACH

“We didn’t have physios in those days so I was just left to jog on my own. It’s funny how life works but I was sitting in the pub at Vasco da Gama, for whatever reason, and Mossie de Nobrega, the chairman at the time, said they needed a coach.

“I wasn’t sure, what did I know, I had only been coaching kids. I thought let me do this for a month or two, I hadn’t officially retired from football and they paid me R1 500. They played in the coastal stream of the First Division and I was there for three months. We played 12 games, we were about third or fourth from the bottom, we didn’t have many players, but we did OK.

“We played Seven Stars and beat them on Sunday, and straight after the game, their chairman Rob Moore called me and said he wanted me to coach Stars. Vasco hadn’t paid me, I didn’t have a contract, so I said to Moore, ‘tell you what, pay me the three months salary that Vasco owe me and give me R1 800 and I’ll join.’

"I told Vasco I was going and the next day I was at Stars’ training. After 12 games, they were bottom when I joined them, but we finished the season second and almost won the league. That was the year SuperSport United beat Camps Bay in the playoffs to go back up to the top flight. But we beat Camps Bay 5-0 … I’ll never forget that game because that’s when we told (national coach) Clive Barker to come down and look at Benni McCarthy, who was the best player I’d ever seen,” Hunt recalled.