Stadium booking circus

The Week 11 of the BTC premiership was marred by controversies following the cancellation   of a match and the indefinite postponement of another.

The Jwaneng Galaxy/Tafic match which was scheduled for Obed Chilume Stadium was   called off after it was determined that the stadium was not available for use by the two   teams on Wednesday.

According to   the available  information,  the  facility   was  long  booked  by the  Special  Olympics  team  who  were  using  the    stadium  for the  whole   week.

Though the issue was  to be solved  some days  before  the   kick-off  day – it   wasn’t the   case  as  both  teams  arrived   to   an  empty   dark  stadium  of    Wednesday  night. However, though   it is reported that   the  Premier League office  made an  effort  to  avert   the situation, sources   claim that  from the  beginning  there was no booking  for  the stadium.

According to Tafic chairman Carlos Sebina; they are not to blame for the circus.

“The   procedure for booking playing facilities is different from those of those of First Division. Here In  Premier league  it  is  the  BPL   which  is responsible   for  securing  the venue  then  as  club we  will then  pay   the stadium  afterwards. But it seems  like it wasn’t the case  here,” said Sebina, quashing claims   that  the   club  was  playing some  tricks  to  bring the game  into  disrepute  since their  players  were not available for the match  in some good  numbers.

“There is nothing like that. All our  players   were  available  including  coaches  and  the squad has been  training  the  whole   week,” he  added.

Galaxy spokesperson Tankiso Morake was fuming with anger.

“A week  ago  we  received  a memo  from the Premier league informing us  about the   revision  of the   fixtures, more especially  about  this particular   matches  with  Tafic, Security  Systems and Township Rollers  in the next  weeks. When we arrived at the stadium   there was no pre-match conference and later we were told that the stadium was not booked. This did cost us financially because when you add money for accommodation plus meals you are talking thousands. We haven’t done the calculations yet but we did lose a lot. Even psychologically we lost because some of our young players who been failing to get game time were picked on the day but since the match was called-off they lost a chance to play,” he said.

According to Morake, they are going to lodge a complaint with the Premier l league office concerning the unfortunate incident.

“Football is a business so the money we spent going there for nothing could have been   invested into something else here but we lost it altogether. We are just waiting for the BPL to give us some correspondence to inform us on what really transpired, from there we will write a complaint letter   to the relevant people,” said Morake.

Following the incident Botswana Football Association (BFA) has since rendered an apology to the football fraternity. “The Botswana Football Association wishes to sincerely    apologize to football  lovers, sponsors and football  fraternity  at  large   for the  confusion    that ensued  at the Obed Chilume  stadium  leading to  the scheduled  game between Jwaneng Galaxy and  Tafic SC  being cancelled. We are currently investigating what exactly   happened and deeply regret that this occurred. We wish to assure the public that this unfortunate incident will not occur again in the future,” reads the apology.

Meanwhile another premier league  match  which  was  scheduled to be played on Thursday   by Township  Rollers and  BDF VI  has  been  postponed  to  December  21. Both  Rollers and  BDF XI   were  heavily  involved  in  the  Mascom   Top 8  last weekend  however it is  BDF  XI which were affected  more since they  played   their   fixture against  Police  XI on Monday  night.