BFA apologises to Rollers over registrations
Boitumelo Khutsafalo | Thursday February 19, 2015 18:00
One of the messes led to exciting winger, Motsholetsi Sikele wearing the number nine jersey with the player’s name covered. Sikele usually wears jersey number 28. Rollers had given the association the list with players’ numbers, but the association erroneously registered him with the number nine shirt instead of 28.
Rollers were only aware of the situation in the morning of February 11 when they got the print-out.
The mistake led to Sikele being given Jerome Ramatlhakwana’s shirt and forced to cover his name with a white sticker.
“At that time it was too late to re-brand Sikele’s jersey. “We had no choice but to cover Ramatlhakwana’s name because Sikele was now registered with that jersey number,” Rollers’ director, Jagdish Shah told journalists yesterday.
The club has now sent a new jersey for production, which will bear Sikele’s name with jersey nine for the upcoming return leg. The association has since apologised for the mix-up, which also include failure to register both Ramatlhakwana and Tshepo Motlhabankwe for the game against Chiefs. Shah said they have accepted the association’s apology and would not take the matter further.
“It is a learning curve and we want the matter to end here,” he said.
He revealed that the association president, Tebogo Sebego has even taken it upon himself to try and see if he can make CAF understand the reasons for failure to register the two players.
Meanwhile, Shah also said they knew they were going to play some crucial games without their head coach, Madinda Ndlovu who was attending an A Level Coaching Course in Zimbabwe recently.
He said Ndlovu had wanted to attend the course last season, but they stopped him because it was his first season at Rollers and were looking to win the league.
When the opportunity arose for him to attend it again this year, they gave him the go-ahead since they did not know whether he would have that opportunity again.
“We cannot stop someone from acquiring such knowledge. Besides, we have a fully-fledged technical team and we have to believe in them,” he said.
In his absence, Rollers lost to Mochudi Centre Chiefs and BDF XI, which saw them surrender their position at the summit of the league table to Chiefs.
He said they realised that they were going to play some of the tough games in his absence and at that time, they could not stop him because he had already paid his fees and had already attended the first phase of the coaching course.
Ndlovu successfully completed the course and returned last week before the match against Kaizer Chiefs.