Phumelela Mbande has been a crucial part of the national team since making her debut in 2012. The 27-year-old earned a Player of the Match award at the 2018 Hockey World Cup against Argentina – a rare achievement for a goalkeeper, and an accolade that kept her in the sport.
Born in Mthatha in the Eastern Cape, and raised in Pietermaritzburg in the KZN, Mbande developed a love for hockey quite by accident. “I played sport here and there. The only sport we had at school was athletics, and I used to play sport on the streets with the other kids. When I was 10 we moved to KZN. I went to a very small school in iXopo called Lynford Primary School, and that’s where I first started playing hockey. I literally never saw the sport before. I had never heard of it before. One day, in our second term, they said, ‘right, we need a goalkeeper’ and for me it made a lot of sense because when I saw the ball I was like ‘Ja, this is where I belong’,” she said.
Mbande is a qualified chartered accountant who plays the game for the love of it, and for no compensation. Hockey in South Africa is not professional, and many of the country’s best players are based overseas, or have day jobs. It’s a source of great frustration for the hockey community which fails to capture major sponsors and attention from the sports ministry.

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