TAFIC fulfils Club Licencing requirements
Lebogang Mosikare | Friday August 30, 2019 11:45
Addressing a press conference in Francistown this week, Sebina said the club was given a provisional licence by Botswana Football Association (BFA) to play in the top tier league pending the finalisation of its financials.
“We need P45,000 to hire a professional company to audit our finances. We are optimistic of submitting audited financials to meet all the requirements of club licencing,” said Sebina.
Touching on a number of issues happening at the club, Sebina also unveiled the team’s new coach, Saul Chamunika from Zimbabwe.
“Our new coach has CAF A coaching qualification. This is as per the requirements of the club licencing,” said Sebina. He added that TAFIC has Under-15, 17 and 19 development sides that he explained would feed their senior team in future. “In the next three years, we want our youth teams to feed our senior team with players.
Our coach has worked in development structures in Zimbabwe before and he will come in handy to assist our development teams,” said Sebina. “This gave him an advantage over other coaches during interviews for the position of the coach of the senior team. A local who was with the club since the beginning of the second leg of the Debswana First Division league last year, will assist Chamunika.
The decision to engage a local to assist Chamunika was taken in order to have continuity.” TAFIC aims to finish in top eight in order to qualify for next season’s Mascom Top 8. “We want him to also produce players who can play for all the junior national teams and the senior national team, Zebras. We, however, don’t want to put any pressure on the coach to win the league.
Next season, we want him to help us occupy one of the top four positions and thereafter challenge for league honours.” Chaminuka has been set a target of reaching the semifinals in the Orange FA Cup.
Sebina said TAFIC has introduced bonuses to motivate players to win many games. “Our players would be given bonuses for winning their home and away games. They will also be given bonuses for drawing away games, but would not be given bonuses for drawing home games. This was taken in order to make Francistown the slaughter house of the club,” said Sebina.
“We have loaned five players from the club and lost seven players to other teams.”
Sebina said the club was granted a lease by the City of Francistown Council for the use of Leseding as its training ground. “We envisage that our good working relationship with the municipality would contribute to the growth of the economy of Francistown in various ways. We have also partnered with Francistown Clinic to assist examine our players.
We have partnered with Progressive Physiotherapy to take care of the fitness of our players,” he said.
He added that the club has penned a two-year contract with a local clothing brand, Dlala as technical partners. TAFIC has signed 10 new players who were recruited from teams in Francistown and outside the city. “We currently have 27 players for this season. We need to fill the remaining three slots with foreign players who were identified by our new coach.
We expect to sign the foreign players during the second leg of the season,” said Sebina. “We have redeployed our coach who helped us to gain promotion to the elite league, Elias Chinyemba to our development sides. He will be assisted by Lovemore Mokgweetsi.”
He added that the duo was given two years to produce quality players who can play for the senior team. Sebina also revealed that they are planning to introduce women’s team in the near future. In another issue, he also revealed that TAFIC is in talks with an England-based club to adopt his team.
“After the deal is finalised we want our coaches and players to go on benchmarking exercises to England to gain valuable knowledge. Details of the deal will be made public in future. We also want to produce players who can play overseas,” said Sebina.