Mikia Kalati
FUTBOLAR’S Club successfully held its second end of the season awards ceremony at the weekend.
This is a Facebook group started by Qoaling born Thabo Motšoane who wanted to connect the football fraternity. It has however grown in leaps and bounds and for the second year running, it has managed to pool funds and reward outstanding players who play in the Lesotho Premier League.
In the first edition of this awards, Hlompho Kalake who was the only winner, walked away with M5000. This year, the group raised more funds and awarded players in four different categories.
Matlama goalkeeper Mohaheng Ramalefane was the biggest winner who walking away with the Young Player of the Year and the Goalkeeper of the Season Awards. He pocketed M5000 for the two awards.
Rethabile Selonyane took home M6000 for the Player of the Season Award while Nkoto Masoabi bagged the Top Goal Scorer Award and walked away M4000 richer.
This is no doubt a massive initiative by football fanatics who saw the need to empower their own players.
The whole group deserves to be celebrated for its efforts to ensure that players’ hard work on the field throughout the year is appreciated.
This is also a wake-up call to our lazy administrators who have over the years failed to come up with initiatives that can easily take local football onto a different level. Administrators need to be proactive and realise that times are changing and the youth of this country are committed to changing the lives of sport stars for the better.
Keep it up Futbolar’s Club and I hope your initiative keeps growing.
Clubs like Bantu, Kick4Life and Matlama also deserve compliments for their respective end of the season awards.
It is only through such initiatives and also understanding that need to be rewarded for their efforts throughout the season that the local game can get out of stagnation.
Before I sign out there is need for me to delve into the shambolic performances by Team Lesotho that participated at the Confederation of University and Colleges Sports Association (CUCSA) Games in Botswana.
Lesotho sent a delegation of 52 athletes to the biennial regional games where they competed with nine other countries in chess, football, athletics and volleyball for both male and female categories.
None of our teams registered a single win which shows how poor we have become as a country in sports.
That performance surely is telling of how poorly we always perform on different platforms.
It is worrying how our teams are always ill prepared for such competitions and it is even worse that these are students who are starting off their professional careers on the wrong footing.
Those in charge of the management of our teams whether professionally or for students need to be accountable for the performances of the athletes. The country cannot keep going on this dismal trajectory on multiple fronts.
