19 May 2016

Football lovers in Francistown have expressed mixed feelings with regard to ECCO City Greens’ failure to gain promotion to  the beMOBILE Premiership.

This comes after the only hope for the Francistown teams plying their trade in the Debswana sponsored First Division North, ECCO, was eliminated in the promotional play-offs by eventual new beMOBILE Premiership newcomers, Rolling Boys.

Speaking in an interview, a taxi operator, Caiphus Alfred, aged 38, who is a Tafic supporter said they had pinned all their hopes on Mamoja Disk, as Ecco are affectionately called by their fans, to represent the community of Francistown.

He said personally for him as a business man, the failure had a double impact because he was looking forward to transporting supporters to the state of the art Francistown Sport Complex for mouth-watering fixtures.

Alfred said also as a fan, he was looking forward to witnessing thrillers between Mamoja Diski and long-time rivals, Mochudi Centre Chiefs and other giants such as Extension Gunners, Township Rollers and Gaborone United.

“Now the Zebras games are my only hope and it is difficult for me to watch other clubs bringing their beMOBILE Premiership games here without any of our teams involved.” He noted.

Former ECCO player from 2000-2008 Mothusi Lesotlho said he was disappointed that the team did not make it as they would have gone on to utilise the newly built Francistown Sports Complex.

“Lack of funds has also led to the team losing some of its key players. Promotion to the premier league was going to put ECCO in the sport light, which was ultimately going to attract sponsors,” he noted.

He said whenever a team was playing in the lower dusty divisions, they no longer attracted fans, something sponsors usually consider whenever they were to come on board.

“Ghetto is really a football city and it is a disgrace that we do not have a team that represents Francistown in the top flight football,” he added.

An entrepreneur, Lesole Mazondo said he used to make cash from selling merchandise of ECCO when they were still talk of the town and in the premier league.

He is however optimistic that ECCO will make sure that they gain automatic promotion this coming season to avoid the heartache of promotional play-offs, which they at one point seemed to have one leg in the elite league, only to lose it dramatically in the second leg.

Lesole said the club would manage to retain 75 per cent of its players despite lack of funds on the basis that most of the players were the team’s supporters.

He even suggested that they could engage the Francistown mayor, Ms Silvia Muzila to help source sponsorship for local teams as they also represented the city if they were in top flight football.

A 39 year-old, Letiya Mshaka said they would have loved to have a local team in the beMOBILE Premiership as the Zebras games did not solve their problems as the business community, because they only came and play in Francistown after some months.