Sad but true: Football not the goose with the golden egg
Mqondisi Dube | Wednesday May 28, 2014 10:53
Finest moment
The grand opening of the Second Africa Youth Games last Thursday left critics eating nothing, but humble pie.
Finest athlete
Judoka Thato Lebang is our star for winning the country’s first gold at the on going AYG.
Disa-star of the week
The opening day fun fare has been spoilt by the organisers’ failure to give regular updates on their website and social media. A correct Games’ schedule is as rare as a blue moon and so are the latest results. Even with sites like Facebook which cost nothing, but fingers to type, the organisers have dismally failed to keep the nation updated. Both the web and Facebook pages are spasmodically updated. This should never happen in an era in which information moves at supersonic speed. Because this competition is a dress rehearsal for the 2014 Niajing Youth Olympics, Botswana should not drop the ball.
Talking Point
The Second Africa Youth Games have done little to mask the challenges football face. Football has not been the best performing code, but expectedly continues to grab the limelight. Despite the millions that it gets, the huge spectator base and comparatively handsome corporate deals, football has continued to behave like a spoilt child; rich in resources, but poor in performance. Judo, swimming, netball, karate, volleyball and others have quietly went about their business with much success. But for football, the usual dose of disappointments are unrelenting. However, when a post-mortem is conducted and a budget drawn, football always emerge with a bulging pocket.
The cry has been growing louder, with netball and other good performing codes voicing their displeasure particularly at the flattering attention that the regular underachiever receives. Even when netball qualified for the World Championships for the first time three years back, the authorities endlessly plied football with more cash at the expense of the history makers. Probably as other codes search for answers; they should look no further than Mollie and Boxer in George Orwell’s 1945 satire ‘Animal Farm’. It will be a fallacy to ignore football, but much more tragic to continue offering chicken feed to clearly deserving codes. However, those tasked with sports still have an opportunity to redeem themselves and choose if they want Botswana to become a jack-of-all-trades, but master of none or pursue a probably unpopular, but likely rewarding targeted funding route.
The stat
16 - the number of medals Botswana had won as of yesterday.
The quote
“We should be thinking about which players to sign.. and not think about how we are going to pay such fines,” Extension Gunners’ chairperson, Kitso Dlamini after his club was fined P10,000 for crowd trouble.