Young GU GM promises a breath of fresh air
Mqondisi Dube | Friday November 24, 2017 12:29
Mmegi Sport: What are your immediate target areas?
Olebile Sikwane: The mandate really is to reorganise and re-engineer the club thinking and modus operandi. To rebuild the office structure, put new people with requisite skills in the office and make the office functional. Secondly, to make the team look good, that is why I have immediately brought in Canterbury as a technical partner. I have worked for Canterbury and I know the strength of their brand.
Look how Jwaneng Galaxy looks today. You should see how GU will look in the Mascom Top 8. The long-term mandate is to bring my ideas of making GU a solid brand which can compete in the region and Africa. I have worked outside and made friends in South Africa, Asia and Europe. I will be looking at utilising those contacts to strengthen the GU brand. I believe partnerships and contacts are critical in any relationship. That is why it was easy to bring Canterbury in as a partner through correspondence before we even fly to Cape Town to sign an agreement. So you would not be wrong to assume that I have been mandated fundamentally to change GU into a professional outfit.
Mmegi Sport: How do you hope to improve GU?
Sikwane: First it was critically important to make GU board understand the type of person they are dealing with. I am a liberal with enterprising ideas, which need money to flow and work.
GU understood that from day one. Secondly, I asked for their undivided support. They agreed to let me run the club unbridled. The chairman, Mr Okaile (Rapula) believes that everybody has a role to play. For example, his strength is finance and mathematics, which is my biggest weakness, so I leave those to him and Mrs Nancy Borakanelo, the treasurer.
The coach must coach undisturbed. The media officer Lone Masibi must work with the media unbridled, while Kagiso Lowang must concentrate on logistics without painful supervision.
City Senne will deal with branches and structures from all corners of the country.
My focus is strategy of the club, player welfare and club partnerships. I link the club with useful people like Canterbury. I must take the development team to Dallas Cup next year to compete there because the future resides in the youth. I must work with the corporate world; they must see GU as a going concern that can be trusted.
The players must be happy. I am more concerned with the brand GU, not much with the results on the field. I have no interest in tactics. I studied law and I worked in the media. If GU is peaceful and if we are candidly honest, committed and loyal to the brand knowing that the GU brand is supreme.
Mmegi Sport: The club’s support base has dwindled over the years, how can this be improved?
Sikwane: Naturally, the team support grows exponentially if you win games. If you sign top players like Dirang Moloi. If you go all out and sign enterprising players like Rollers did with Shakes Ngwenya last season and now with Skhwama Matete; your fans come back. It’s like Turin when they signed Maradona. The city came to life, the club became big. If you appear on TV signing an agreement with Barloworld or Chicken Licken, people come back. If you play good football, fans come back.
We have a good coach who believes in good patient build-ups which end in goal.
There is this common and dangerous thinking that we must sign up members, for what? Do we have an incentive for the supporters? When they take up our membership, what do they get in return? Can they get a discount at Liqourama? Can they fly Air Botswana to Maun at 10% discount? Can they watch a movie at Capitol Cinema at a discount? Can GU bury them when they are dead? Where do they sleep when they get to Maun? These are immediate questions we must answer before we make them pay a monthly subscription. The today is more inquisitorial. People are always ready to come back. Trust me, GU is still Rollers’ biggest headache.
Mmegi Sport: In your view, is the GU brand visible enough?
Sikwane: The brand is entrenched but just needs someone to reactivate it. We must take it out, e tsoge. The first thing I thought of was to engage my board to say GU has very weak relations with the media. Let’s have a breakfast meeting with the media and discuss issues with them without fear or favour so that they don’t write based on speculation and rumours.
We will now have a monthly media day where we engage with the media. Immediately I engaged Lone Masibi to go meet BanT management team and they were excited. Luckily BanT played soccer while a student at Maruapula. His uncle Jojo Mogotsi is a legend, so they understood what we need. GU must appeal to the youth. BanT has a relationship with schools and colleges around. That’s his market.
He has an amazing vibe which resonates with the youth. Now, the GU brand must go to schools and be synonymous with the youth. The youth is the future. My biggest fear is to let GU become another Moroka Swallows. Swallows remains only in the hearts of old people who worked predominantly in South African mines. That’s a very dangerous thing for any brand. Brands must evolve with time.
Mmegi Sport: What are you bringing to the club and what attracted you specifically to GU?
Sikwane: Luckily for me, I have never been a card carrying member of any local club. So I bring my brains and energy not my partisan or cynical heart. But I have worked with almost all local clubs with players I represented before. My last job in Cape Town, I worked for Berlin Sports Consulting.
There, I saw how development of players worked. We worked primarily as legal representatives of clubs who are shortchanged yet they developed the cream in Africa. Players you see in the English and French leagues. On a daily basis, I worked with Mimossa, Casablanca; big clubs seeking solidarity payments and training and compensation for development academies in Africa.
This is a field journalists don’t cover but is very critical. I know which door to knock on in Europe. I know people who run football in Scandinavia, India or Azerbaijan. I know the challenges of technical sponsorship in relation to Botswana market. The challenges are huge because the terrain is smoother where I have been for the past 11 years. But I would not have taken on the challenge if I thought it was impossible.
Mmegi Sport: What needs to be done to ensure GU competes effectively at the top?
Sikwane: It’s very easy but very difficult. First the players must be good enough. Predominantly and preferably, players drawn from your development structures. They must be happy.
Your stuff must be happy at the office. The board must be united. Your supporters must be solid. Your brand must be attractive to sponsors, the sponsors will put money in, the fans will associate, they will buy merchandise. Suddenly we become a wheel that just moves at a frightening speed. It will be a jamboree in the stands. That jamboree and euphoria will be explicit in the field of play. That is what Rollers do now. Very easy, very difficult but possible if we work on it.