22 Jan 2019

Despite a successful 2018/19 Debswana First Division North league first leg, Tafic is said to be not financially ready to compete in the beMobile Premier League.

This gloomy analysis was made by the team’s chairperson, Carlos Sebina at the club’s ordinary meeting held in Francistown on Sunday.

Tafic has so far played 11 games, won 10 and drew one and are leading the log with 31 points.

Indications are that the team has high chances of earning qualification to the top flight league, but the finances, according to Sebina, are just not there for that kind of league.

He said their wage bill was P55 000 every month, and that  they were failing to fully honour it.

He said apart from the wage bill they needed at least P7 500 to fulfil every game they needed to pay for players’ transport to training, food and accommodation.

He said it would be even harder should they ascend to the top league.

The chair stated that if the team qualified for league promotion as supporters wanted, they should be ready to support it financially as the wage bill would rise to at least P120 000 monthly.

“The team’s executive committee is not ready for what could be coming, and the results as brought by the good play strongly indicates that we might qualify.

The committee’s plan is to improve the state of the team this season then ascend to top league and fight for honours starting from the 2019/20 BTC Premier league season going forward,” he said.

Despite the sad reality, Sebina promised that all was not lost as they had been engaging with numerous sponsors and donors who have shown eagerness to get on board.

He said they wronged many of their financiers in the past, and that they took the decision to rectify that, adding that many such people appreciated their efforts and were slowly coming back to finance the team.

Sebina also revealed that they were on the verge of landing sponsorship from a South African company, revealing that four of the company’s directors had signed on the deal and the fifth would sign soon.

If successful, he said the South African company might start paying all Tafic players by July.

He urged team supporters to deposit any amount of money into the club’s accounts monthly to help sustain it.

Earlier, the team’s secretary general Forster Machola had stated that the team was operating without a vice chair since Carlos Motaung resigned last year. He also said they did not have a welfare manager and technical director.

Furthermore, he revealed that the club failed to give financial reports for two seasons’ from the last committee, and that the new committee took a decision to close the past committee’s accounts at Bank ABC and open new ones at FNB and an investment account at Stanbic Bank.

He stated that teams were after their star strikers, Mbatshi Elias, Kemoreng Batisani and goalkeeper Abednico Morapedi who have all been given better offers.

“There is nothing we can do to keep Mbatshi Elias in our team because we cannot afford him at this moment.

The young man is currently what they term ‘hot property.’ So we should all wish him well in his future with another club,” Machola said after some supporters showed displeasure with the possible departure of the team’s top goal scorer. ENDS