Ailing Tovey on the mend

Johannesburg - Safa technical director Neil Tovey, who suffered a heart attack last month, has thanked South Africans from all walks of life for “the outpouring of support” he has received.

Tovey conveyed this message through Safa president Danny Jordaan, who visited him at his home in Mount Edgecombe, Durban, on Wednesday.

Jordaan was accompanied by a delegation from Safa’s KwaZulu-Natal region.

Jordaan’s spokesperson Dominic Chimhavi said the Safa president had been “pleasantly surprised by such a good and sudden turn of events after the initial fear”.

Jordaan had “witnessed a miracle in motion on Wednesday. Tovey can now walk freely, talk freely, and looks in great shape for someone who suffered such a devastating ordeal”.

Tovey’s heart attack was the third in the space of little more than a year. The former Bafana Bafana skipper had two heart attacks in February last year.

“We had tea with Tovey and his wife ­Michelle. We walked around the yard, and shared light moments for hours,” Jordaan said.

Chimhavi said that in the absence of Tovey, who had been asked to “take it as easy as he can”, deputy technical director Fran Hilton- Smith was in charge.

The spokesperson said: “Tovey has put most of the mechanisms in place that would see us through the rest of 2016. Hilton-Smith will fill in whenever there is a gap.”

The spin doctor said Jordaan had emphasised to Tovey that he should not rush to go back to work until he had fully recovered.

He said Safa wanted to assure the nation that the “worst is behind us” and that Tovey was on the road to recovery.

Jordaan said: “He is still going through some rehabilitation, something that is imperative for someone who experienced such an ordeal.

“But he should be able to resume duties sometime early next year. Tovey is a fighter and we are glad that he managed to once again overcome this setback.”