Officials, supporters furious as Rollers' game is postponed

CHIPPA LEGODIMO
Correspondent | Monday December 20, 2010 00:00

 

The game had to be called off because the University of Botswana Stadium which was supposed to host the match was locked and reports are that the Premier League committee did not book the venue for the fixture.

Multitudes of supporters went home angry after the mouth-watering clash was called off Friday night with a few who had already bought tickets furious as they could not be refunded immediately.

Some supporters claimed to have come from as far as Mahalapye for the match and demanded their money back immediately.

Santos' manager Super Keatlaretse told Sport Monitor that it was now becoming a habit for his team to fall victim to such a situation saying, 'two years ago we had the same problem in Jwaneng when we were supposed to play BMC and it was towards Christmas again. We went there, BMC were there but the referees were not there and imagine how much we had spent on transport alone! It happened with the same team again three seasons back when we arrived in Lobatse only to find that the stadium was not booked and when we arrived some people were still trying to mark the ground'.

Keatlaretse said they were angry that after putting so much effort in preparing for Friday's match, they once again had to go back without even going inside the pitch. He said that he was disappointed in the premier league committee's continued ignorance of such important issues like confirming the availability of grounds before matches.

'The teams have used time and money preparing for this match throughout the week and now that it has not been played we have to budget for the same game twice and unnecessarily so.

It is surprising that Santos have been written letters accusing us of not attending pre- match meetings and they (Premier League) want to fine us when they have done something like this to us for the last three seasons. The same meetings we are accused of not attending we only arrived late and in one of them we had an accident on the way to the match against Mochudi Centre Chiefs,' he said.

Township Rollers' coach, Wesly Mondo, was also disappointed saying, 'all our plans have gone to waste now because of something that no one here understands. I wonder how could people let us come here when they knew they had not arranged the venue. We are very disappointed but we shall hear what their explanation is, maybe there is an explanation to all this. We shall play this game next year.

There is nothing we can do now but I hope people have learnt something from this because this is one occurrence that no one would want to see repeating'. Premier League general manager Setete Phuthego declined to comment on the matter saying they were still going to investigate the matter and find out why the stadium was locked.

'It is still premature to say anything [now]; maybe on Monday we would have an answer,' he said on Friday night.