19 Feb 2015

As it is common practice for any team to tighten its squad in preparation for CAF competitions, Township Rollers is not an exception.

The competitions are said to be draining and cumbersome, and Township Rollers found it fit to beef-up squad.

They lured in crème-de la crème players of Botswana football as they managed to get the signatures of Noah Maposa, Jerome Ramatlhakwana, Dirang Moloi and Tshepo Motlhabankwe. The intention was clear; to conquer Africa.

Football lovers were shocked to find out that the players could not play against Kaizer Chiefs on Saturday, February 14 because they were not registered with CAF.

BOPA enquiries have since established that both Township Rollers and Botswana Football Association (BFA) were negligent.

As per CAF regulation V, article 12 registration of all players who will be taking part in CAF Champions League are registered starting December 1-31 for free, while the second registration commences on January 1 –15 which carries a charge of P2 423  per player registered.

The third registration starts on January 16 to 31, which goes with a charge of P4 845 per player, and Township Rollers managed to utilise the first free registration by submitting the names of 26 players.

The enquiries further revealed that Motlhabankwe and Ramatlhakwana were registered on the second registration and P4 845 was paid to CAF for each player.

However, BFA made a blunder, because procedurally players had to be registered offline.

 It is only in the first registration that players can be registered online as per the regulations.

Now as it stands, BFA registered the players online and paid, but investigations revealed that as a tradition CAF sends all the associations’ offline registration documents but BFA says it did not receive them.

 The question now is why they did not follow up the matter with CAF office and enquire about the forms.

As for Maposa and Moloi, Rollers should have known better that, even if they had paid for their late registration, the players would not had been eligible to play as per Article 12.

Article 12 stipulates that, “the players whose licenses were received in CAF between January 16 and 31 shall be qualified to play only the matches of the 1/8 finals and onwards on condition that the player is registered in his federation by the January  15 of the year of the competition at the latest.”

Rollers secretary general, Khumoyame Masonya told BOPA that after following all the required procedures, they only learnt on Wednesday that their players would not take part in the game.

“We had thought everything was under control, we had anticipated that JJ and Talk-Talk will not have a problem because their names were submitted for registration,” he said.

BFA’s competitions manager, Stephen Maleka admitted that his office takes the blame for not properly registering Motlhabankwe and Ramatlhakwana.

Maleka said, “we registered them online, instead of offline, but their names were submitted, now I’m just wondering as to why CAF did not alert us to use off line documents. 

As for Maposa and Moloi, the rules are clear that they can only play at a certain stage,” he said. ENDS