New First Division chairman outlines priorities

CHIPPA LEGODIMO
Correspondent | Wednesday July 14, 2010 00:00

Babitseng was voted into office three weeks ago to replace long-serving Charles Chilisa.  He said his main priority is to get sponsorship for the league. He stated that his committee believes that getting full time employees to run the league will make it easy to impress potential sponsors. 'Getting a sponsor is top of our priority but we have agreed as a committee that for this league to go forward, there is a serious need to establish a fully-fledged administration office to take care of the daily running of the league. Otherwise it would continue to be a pipe dream to think that we could grow. Proper communication structures need to be developed where clubs and all stakeholders would have easy access to information and services,' Babitseng said.

The chairman is optimistic about the chances of improving the league's status saying they are blessed to have people who are knowledgeable in running football. He said that his committee needs to establish a good working relationship with clubs such that they are aware of what the administration is doing.

'If you plan for people without involving them, then it becomes difficult because you could end up mixing up priorities and in the end, they could resist whatever change you are trying to introduce,' he said.

Babitseng believes that as the immediate feeder to the Premier League, the First Division needs to be run professionally so that clubs promoted to the top league bring quality instead of adding numbers. He said they have approached the Botswana Football Association (BFA) to fund the training of administrators, coaches as well as medics before the league starts. Babitseng said his committee has already started talking to different companies for sponsorship. Although he admitted that it would not be easy to get sponsors, the youthful administrator said they were confident of convincing companies to support the league. The competition has been without a sponsor since the departure of MedRescue more than six seasons ago.

The new committee believes that bringing in various companies on board to sponsor different aspects of the league like technical, administration and refereeing is better than a general sponsorship. 'Once again if we get money, then we would have to prioritise and see which area need funds more. We know the recession has not been kind to companies but not all companies suffered. One thing that has made securing sponsorship difficult has been the fact that as sporting codes, we tend to focus on almost the same companies and this stretches them. There are other companies out there who would be willing to help,' he said. Babitseng said the committee is scheduled to hold an introductory meeting with all clubs on July 25.