The prisoners built their own goals, and the league's building and maintenance committee rolled and leveled a main field — eventually complete with a drainage system — and later a secondary one.

Nelson Mandela was among the prisoners in isolation on Robben Island who could not play in the soccer league. But Mandela enjoyed watching games from his cell - until prison authorities took that privilege from him as well ... when the wardens on the island discovered that his only entertainment was watching the games through the bars and windows of his cell, they built a wall to punish him.