Moorosi Tsiane
THE Premier League Management Committee (PLMC) along with the representatives of the 14 teams in the elite league, last week recommended that the season be ended in its current state.
The PLMC said the decision was reached to avoid a potential financial crisis for the clubs.
The football season was supposed to have ended in May but was disrupted by the Covid-19 outbreak and the Lesotho Football Association decided to stretch it until the end of this month.
This means that if the season were to continue, clubs would have to foot serious bills in coming up with strict conditions to curb the spread of the virus from May until the end of this month.
When the season was halted, Bantu was topping the table with 50 points from 18 matches while second-placed Matlama were three points behind from the same number of games.
The recommendation was made a few hours before FIFA announced a whopping M25 million bailout for LeFA to help teams to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic.
This makes me think that the PLMC rushed in making this recommendation as LeFA was yet to come up with a plan using the funds from FIFA.
The PLMC said it was also yet to consult with other stakeholders on the way forward and I fail to understand why they would rush into making such a decision without the adequate consultations first.
I understand that the teams might be worried about the expenses that they will be incurring during this extended period but this whole issue doesn’t only affect premier league teams. There are sponsors involved as well as the LNIG Top8, which is still running.
While I think it only made sense for the league season to be ended, this could have been done in consultation with all the stakeholders to avoid conflicts.
The irony of all this is that, just a few weeks ago the PLMC was complaining that LeFA was excluding it in key deliberations but this is exactly what they have done in sidelining other committees like the A Division Management Committee (ADMACO) who have two teams which were supposed to be promoted into the premier league when the season ends.
By the time the league was stopped, the A Division was left with at most three matches in both the north and south streams.
Given the log standings in both streams, calling off the league won’t be an easy decision because Manonyane is leading the South stream by just a point over Machokha. Machokha has played 16 matches while Manonyane has played 15. In the North stream, CCX is leading Galaxy by three points. They have both played 15 games.
Manonyane were leading the South stream table with 37 points while Machokha had 36 points.
In the North stream, CCX were leading the table with 34 points, while Galaxy had 30 points.
I think the PLMC should have sat down with ADMACO to reach an informed decision that would suit all stakeholders.
It does not make sense for the PLMC to declare that it has reached a decision when it is yet to consult with the ADMACO.
