By Anita Rannoba
The Mascom Top 8 awards have come and gone, but there are still some lingering bad feelings about how the awards were conducted, not less from Gaborone United.
According to sources, ‘Moyagoleele’ as GU is affectionately known, was snubbed from the awards despite finishing second to eventual winners Jwaneng Galaxy.
As per the norm for the Mascom Top 8 awards runners up are usually invited to grace the award ceremony, even though the invite might not be in bulk as with the title winner.
Normally, there is a selection of representatives to stand in for the runner up. These invitations do not include with them those extended to awards nominees.
Speaking in an interview with one of the insiders of Moyagolele, who wished to remain anonymous, he stated that they never received any invite. “We never received any invite only our head coach went there,” he said.
According to the head coach, Philemon Makghwengwe, from GU, it seems only him and awards nominees received the invites.
The way the invitations were carried out has left Makhwengwe wondering why only awards nominees were invited while not even one person from their management received the invite.
“My team was not invited I do not know why but only I and Phoko received the invite as we were both nominated. Mascom should have at least enticed us as the other finalists so that we may reject the invite ourselves rather than not be invited at all,” Makhwengwe said.
Adding that maybe they were wrong to have fought a good battle in trying to win the title, even so, he added that he wished that they could have been at least an award for the runners up than leave empty handed. Highlighting that he is not saying all this because Moyagolele we runners up but for any other team that can be runners up adding that the invite was cold and even one sided.
“I feel they should have not invited us at all and invited only this team because the event was still one sided,” he commented.
In defence to this, the CEO for Botswana Premier League, Thabo ‘Styles’ Ntshinogang , noted that GU was invited for the awards and they were collected by the team’s general manager. Highlighting that all the nominees were invited at the same time on the 12th April adding that it was the time after receiving invitation cards from the sponsor on the 1oth April in the afternoon.
“It is not true that only one team was invited, we do have a guest list which has proven to that effect. All participating clubs in the tournament were invited to the awards, the norm is that the winning team gets the bulk invitations and this has been happening in the previous seasons,” Ntshinogang clarified.
2016/17 and 2017/18 runners up Orapa United, Public Relations Officer, Kabo William, indicated that the both seasons which they were runners up they did receive their invitations but as a team they decided to reject the invitation and not honour it.
Between Gaborone United and BPL question is who is not honest?
