17 Feb 2016

If football laws were suspended for a day, it seems the quartet of Francistown Debswana First Division North teams would peacefully decide amongst themselves who gets promotion to the elite beMOBILE Premiership.

After all, the four former top flight football campaigners are just seated in the most interesting positions of the league as if it is only themselves to fight it out for promotion.

They are compacted together from position three to six, and if the law was held in abeyance, they would remove the log leaders, Mahalapye Hotspurs and its runner-up Sua Flamingoes from the top and decide amongst themselves who gets to kiss the dusty grounds goodbye.

ECCO City Green is perched on position three with 26 points while Tafic is in position four with 22 posts, so is TASC and Great North Tigers (GNT) with a similar number of points, but in positions five and six respectively because of the goal differences.

The reality, however, is that there is no way the teams could suspend the laws of the game, and the Francistown quartet is faced with the reality of either one or two of them getting promotion or Hotspurs and Flamingoes beating them to the race.

It is a precarious position that the quartet find themselves in and if none of them gets promoted, the last of them could then get promotion after five years if one of them gets to be promoted each year.

Add to this the possibility of about two or three of the north teams of the 2015/16 beMOBILE Premiership season relegating to the lower league, as it seems highly likely, and the plethora of problems for the four teams would have escalated.

The First Division North executive committee would be faced with the dilemma of relegating more than two teams to the lower league, while promoting only two from such league.

It is rare in football leagues around the world to find a city without a top flight team, but in Botswana, Francistown is a living example of that.

The absence of the quartet in top flight football has seen the Francistown football connoisseurs being starved of their favourite past time.

The withdrawal symptoms of supporters have been immense and visible, and they cannot wait long for another dose of football fever and continue the euphoria they once felt when the Tango Boys, Matchimenyenga, Mamoja Diski and GNT used to host big teams such as Township Rollers, Extension Gunners and Mochudi Centre Chiefs.

With a vacuum created, the above crowd pullers have now decided to feel the gap by bringing some of their games to the new Francistown Sports Complex, with much admiration from the Ghetto quartet.

The Botswana Football Association (BFA) has also served a Good Samaritan role by bringing the senior national team, the Zebras’ games to the new stadium, to appease the insatiable appetite of locals.

It appears the quartet’s dreams of using the stadium to host big teams in the beMOBILE Premiership would still be held in abeyance until one of them gets promotion.

The new sports complex does not come cheap if one is to hire and use the quartet with few of their supporters attending the games, they are faced with the old stadium to use if they want to get a break from using the dusty grounds.

The dilemma, however, is not impossible to come out from as some soccer pundits and fans have always felt that the current status quo of the quartet calls for unification of the teams.

Some argue that one or two teams can be formed if all the teams, not only the quartet, can merge and present a united front that would challenge for permanent residence in the top echelons of local football.

Others opine that the institutional sides, GNT and TASC should be the ones dismantled and join Tafic and ECCO, which are assumed to be belonging to the society.

If such thoughts could be adopted or given consideration at the roundtable meetings of the quartet, maybe, just maybe, the dilemma will become a thing of the past. Ends