22 Apr 2015

The secretary general of the Debswana First Division North, Rapula Gaothobogwe, has suggested that Francistown teams should consider merging into one or two main teams to be able to remain in top flight football.

Francistown teams are faced with a major dilemma as they will not have any representation in the be Mobile Premier League during the 2015/16 season and some of the teams might be relegated from the Debswana First Division North to regional leagues.

Speaking in an interview, Gaothobogwe said some Francistown teams, Great North Tigers (GNT), Amakhosi and TASC might be lost to the second tier league.

He noted that a merger of the teams, following in the footsteps of Orapa and Jwaneng teams that merged to form one team, could just be what the doctor ordered for the Francistowners.

With the relegation of Ecco City Greens to the first division, Francistown will be having more teams competing for promotion come the end of 2015/16 season. He said the idea of a merger has been spoken in harsh tones in football corridors given the status quo of the Francistown teams. 

“However, the problem with a merger, which is a good idea, is that it needs courageous people as each one of the teams are societies that want to keep their identities,” he noted.

Gaothobogwe said people need to be decisive on the matter and see if it was possible and could produce the desired results. He noted that there was need to mobilise the team owners, by calling a Pitso where the matter could be discussed thoroughly. 

Gaothobogwe said another problem that Francistown teams faced was competing for the limited sponsors in the second city.

He said most of the companies in Francistown are branches, whose headquarters are in Gaborone and trying to solicit sponsorship from them often hits a snag as they are then referred to the head office.

Another problem, according to Mr Gaothobogwe was lack of proper development structures that could help feed the team once the older players retire.

He noted that Green Lovers, a team from Serowe that has qualified for the beMobile Premier League promotional play-offs after finishing as runners-up, uses youngsters, which helps it to succeed as compared to the Francistown teams using old campaigners.

Mr Gaothobogwe said they would also be faced with shortage of playing grounds where they could fixture the teams, a problem, which has been in existence even in the 2014/15 season.He said they compete for grounds with churches and other lower leagues as well as the constituency league, hence the need to look into the matter seriously. ENDS