There is very little Ronwen Williams can do wrong, with the shot stopper in imperious form for both club and country - but it could have ended differently after the goalkeeper decided to stop playing following a tragedy in 2010.
Week after week, the 32-year-old continues to produce heroics for Mamelodi Sundowns, his latest coming as he saved a penalty against Bernard Parker in his side's 3-0 win over TS Galaxy on Monday.
This continues off the fine form he has shown for Bafana Bafana, where he captained the nation to a third-place finish in the AFCON earlier this year.
But the football fraternity could nearly have been denied Williams' prodigious talents, after he decided to down his gloves in 2010, following the tragic passing of his brother Marvin at the time.
Williams was on the brink of breaking into the SuperSport United first team - but he was ready to call it quits, had it not been for some sound advice from now Chippa United coach Kwanele Kopo.
"The big thing that happened was 2010 when I lost my brother to a car accident. That's when I didn't want to play football anymore. And I didn't go back. I was making the transition into the first team," he told CNN in an interview.
"I think it was two or three months I didn't want to go back. I just wanted to be around my family. I just wanted to be in Galvandale and it went on for a very long time and I started getting calls for me to come back and I said, 'no, I'm not coming back' and I will drop the phone.
"And I can remember coach Kopo saying something that just hit me. He said 'you know, your brother would want this for you. So whatever you do now, do it for him. He wouldn't want you to lose and just throw away these years of sacrifice, he will want you to keep going and reach your dream'. When I dropped to the call that day, it hit me and I was like, 'Yeah, he's right. You know,'
"So that's how things went from me wanting to give up, and then five months down-the-line. I think it was December 2010 and then I signed a first team contract."
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