Postponements irk women�s teams
Kabelo Boranabi | Friday October 21, 2016 16:11
The league has been postponed twice in two months, first in August to pave way for the country’s golden jubilee celebrations, and this month when the league committee said it was unprepared.
Speaking to Mmegi Sport yesterday, UB Kicks new coach Matlhogonolo Mokgosi said the postponements have killed his players’ hunger more so that the team is going through a transition period after losing former mentor, Alex Malete to Double Action. “When the league is about to start, players are always hungry to play and cement their places in the team early into the season. The recent postponements have killed their hunger to play. This makes our job as coaches difficult as we have to try to lift their morale,” he said.
Mokgosi further said his training programme has been disrupted as the normal preseason period has long passed.
“At this time we should be playing league games. Preseason has its own period, it is difficult to extend your training period at the same (time) trying to keep the team’s morale high,” Mokgosi said.
For her part defending champions, Township Rollers’ coach Gaoletlhoo ‘Ronaldo’ Nkutlwisang said she had to halt all the preseason plans as they are in the dark as to when the league would start.
“The players were ready, but now we as a team we do not know when and if the league would start. We (are) nearing the festive season, some of the players are worried if we would ever have the Christmas break. So we had to stop the preseason (training) to give the players some rest,” she said.
Nkutlwisang, who is also the coach of the female, Zebras said the postponements would hurt the national teams performance as their rivals’ league are in full swing.
“It destroys us. We had a good preseason since July. We won all the three tournaments we participated in.
We were carrying a good offseason momentum. But whatever has been going on has killed that momentum. We (are) hoping to have a good season after last year’s disappointment,” Prisons XI coach Kabo Gareitse said. He, however, said they were informed that the postponement was to look for a sponsor, which he said was for a good course.