Gor Mahia’s midfield lynchpin Enoch Morrison has called on the AFC Leopards fraternity not to take anything personally after the second leg Mashemeji Derby in the 25/26 SportPesa League campaign.
In the match where Gor took a crucial 0-1 victory courtesy of Alpha Onyango’s second half strike at Nyayo National Stadium to open a six-point gap at the top over Leopards, Morrison shot to the limelight as he fully soaked himself in celebrations with the K’Ogalo faithful.
While his antics were the ultimate joy for the record Kenyan champions who had been humiliated after losing the first leg in December 2025, a large part of the Ingwe side did not take his actions politely.
Most Ingwe fans, who were reeling from the pain of losing not just the match but also a huge chance of mounting a serious charge for the title for the first time in their bid to end their 28-year title drought, felt his actions went over the top.
However, speaking to SportPesa Blog, Morrison was clear to point that those were not his intentions, and he was not disrespecting them.
“It’s banter. Anybody who takes things personally does not understand football because it happens everywhere. When you win, you just celebrate.
Anything that you do is not to disrespect your opponent, because I feel like winning the derby, does not guarantee any player or any member to disrespect the loser. So, we just celebrate out of the excitement. It’s not for disrespect.
Even me, I did not know all the things I did till when I got home and saw the videos. There’s no hard feeling. I will never, ever disrespect any fan because you may never know where you find yourself tomorrow.
Maybe not to play for them, but even recommendation from even one of their fans can take you somewhere as a player. So I will never, ever disrespect any fan. But like I said, it’s banter when they won against us they celebrated,” he explained.
“When they won (first leg), they were all over, you know, saying a lot of stuff, but it is football, it is banter considering the rivalry between Gor Mahia and Leopards.
You know this kind of game is for bragging rights. Whoever wins brags, that’s it. If you don’t want to be in your house crying, you have to win. And me, I wanted to brag so I had to win. I had to kill myself and win,” he added.
The former Asante Kotoko midfielder also opened up on how the pain from losing the first leg of the Mashemeji Derby was compounded by the Ingwe players mocking him in videos after the game.
“Even some of their players were making videos for me. Yes, I took it in good faith, I went home, I cried in my room, and I came back strong. It was very painful for me, very, very painful. I was in my room, I was alone because you can’t lose the derby and feel happy about it, so I was very, very sad.
When we won the second leg, we have every right to enjoy out of everything that we lost in the first round,” he said.
Gor Mahia midfielder Morrison
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The Ghanaian also went on to explain how the record 21-time Kenyan champions managed to get the job done with a big part of the playing unit keen not to enter the history books for the wrong reasons.
“You know when it’s the derby you do not need any motivation because the game itself is a very big motivation for every player.
Considering the history of Gor Mahia, it’s quite long since Leopards beat us home and away. So we can’t be the squad to do that. We can never allow that to happen.
So it was something challenging for us that we can never let them beat us home and away, because it’s been long. For our reputation and for our quality of players we did not deserve that. So we wanted to win the derby.
This time we planned for them because the first leg we did not plan. Actually, in the first leg, we felt like we had won games continuously and were on high, so we did not plan like that for them. We felt we could beat them. We were too sure of ourselves.
In this second one, we had a lot of time to prepare for them. The whole week was about them and like their coaches were saying already, they knew what they were supposed to do. They taught us what we are supposed to do. So everybody had purpose on the field of play on that day,” he revealed.
Witht the win, Gor took their tally to 61 points after 29 matches as Leopards remained on 55 with only five games to play before the season wraps up.
Gor can extend the gap to nine points before Leopards play as they face Kakamega Homeboyz at the Mumias Complex on Sunday afternoon.
