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Former goalkeeper of the Nigerian national women’s football team, Rachael Aladi Ayegba is now a double-decker bus driver in London.
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UK is battling with a crisis of driver shortage during the pandemic and Ayegba who decided to lend a helping hand, signed up to be a driver of the buses, Standard UK reports.
She played in the 2007 Women’s World Cup, the 2006 and 2008 African Women’s Championships and had an 11-year stint as a professional footballer in Finland, winning the league title in 2013 with PK-35 Vantaa.
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The UK publication reports that she now drives the number 185 between Lewisham and Victoria. She is in the middle of a year’s training.
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The 35-year-old who moved to England in 2018, says she had visited London for years on holiday and always admired the double decker buses.
She works for Go-Ahead, the bus and train giant that operates about a fifth of the capital’s buses on behalf of TfL.
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She reckons driving a bus and playing in goal have a lot in common, which is about safety first and about not making a mistake.
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When you are trying to save the ball, you need safe hands. But there are ten others on your side.
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“When you drive a bus, you are on your own.
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“Mentally you have to be 100% ready, if you are a goalkeeper the defenders can help you. You can’t make any mistakes driving a bus,” she was quoted on Standard UK.
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On the issue of bus drivers not getting enough respect, she said;
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They don’t. I think we just see a bus driver as a nobody. I see them more like a pilot, if anything goes wrong, it’s on them. Now I’ve done the training, the people I respect most, after my family, are the drivers.”
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Ayegba, whose favourite player is Cristiano Ronaldo, doesn’t play football anymore, though she has coaching licenses.
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“I am old. You have to know when to stop,” she said.
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