Fat cheques await Rollers players
Staff Writer | Friday March 16, 2018 11:53
Rollers are just 90 minutes away from achieving a rare feat, as they seek to become the first local team to reach the group stages of continental club football.
Notwane were the first team to reach the second round in 1995, while Gaborone United made it to the second round in 2010.
Since then it has been a consistent douse of disappointment, until Rollers’ latest intervention.
Club president, Jagdish Shah said there were incentives set aside for the players in the event they prevail over Tanzanian side, Young Africans. Already, Rollers are 2-1 up, half way through the two-legged encounter, and are odds on favourites to progress to the group stages.
“Definitely there are bonuses, although I cannot reveal the amount,” Shah said yesterday.
Rollers players are already amongst the highest paid in the country, and the club’s purse will further bulge with progress to the group stages.
“Everyone wants to play in the group stages. At the moment, we don’t want anything negative to disrupt us, actually we want support in order to progress,” Shah said.
He said he was not surprised that success is about to come earlier than expected. Shah has been the financial driving force behind Rollers’ recent successes, in a sea of ‘poverty’ where the majority of clubs are battling to stay afloat.
“We have been talking about something like this (reaching the group stages) for sometime now. I have always wanted to see Rollers reach greater heights. We have showed that Botswana clubs can do it,” Shah said.