Hellenic Football Club
The Hellenic Football Club was started in 1958 by a couple of friends, Nick Augustidies, Tony Riera, and Milton Caldis. The name Hellenic came about, when the group of friends arranged a match against Bellville Hockey Club at a field behind Somerset Hospital in Green Point. In the changing room before the match, they still didn’t have a name for their team, and Dimitri Ziotos said they should be called Hellenic, because they were Greek. This is how the club got its name. The club started as a fun weekend activity with working men making up the team.
Via Dimitri Pasladis, a retired Fifa referee from Greece living in Cape Town, began having the club play in the different divisions. During this time, a number of football players came to Cape Town from Greece to play for Hellenic. Hellenic was promoted to the first division, NFL, and their home ground became Greenpoint Stadium.
The club hosted an annual dance at the Greek Club, and a number of special guests were always invited to attend. The club came to play a significant role in the Greek community in South Africa, with a lot of Greeks supporting the club financially.
Due to the Apartheid system, the club had two supporting clubs, a white supporters club and a coloureds supporters club. The club also had a great number of Jewish supporters from the Seapoint area as well as a number of Jewish people on the club’s board. The committee had first choice for season tickets and then the tickets were opened up for sale to the public.
Rivalries and Trophies:
The clubs biggest rival was Cape Town City. For, one of the matches, all 30,000 of the tickets were sold 2 days before the game, and on match day the supporters broke down the gates and the crowd went up to 40, 000.
Through the years, the Hellenic Club won a number of trophies including the league championship in
1971, the BP Cup, the Coca-Cola Shield and
the Champion of Champions Trophy.