Extreme FC were awarded three points on Wednesday in the Chipiku Premier Division League after Support Battalion FC arrived late at the venue, Aubrey Dimba Stadium in Mchinji.
According to Support Battalion Team Manager Mavuto M’bwana, they had a breakdown on their way to the boarder district hence to late arrival.
He said despite communicating with officials that they will arrive late due to the breakdow, they were told to return without playing as the points were donated to the home side.
As per rules, Extreme also benefited two goals, handing them advantage to lead the log table with five points.
The Wednesday’s incident has exposed challenges in the K14.5million Chipiku Premier Division League.
Deliberate disregard of fixtures
It has been revealed that teams in the league deliberately disregard fixture arrangements of the organizers.
There are mixed reactions on the issue, whether the tendency constitutes match fixing or if indeed, it is because of problems beyond one’s control.
For example, Extreme FC, Luanar FC coach Millias Jegwe Pofera questioned the rationale of awarding points and goals to Extreme FC because the other team came late when in the past, they been playing such games.
He cited examples of their games against Support Battalion and Mbabzi United which started 16:06 and 16:05 respectively instead of 14:30.
Mabvuto Bwana concurred with Jegwe saying their games against Ngwanje and Wimbe started two hours late due to the similar reasons.
This clearly shows that teams takes rules set by the organizers for granted which is unacceptable in a professional League to miss kick-off time without concrete reasons.
Secrecy
Some quarters have opined that there is a veil of secrecy coupled with poor communication between officials assigned to handle games and the executive committee of the league.
Match day officials have been hiding this for a while without reporting to the Association to act on teams that have been defying their orders.
Limited time
Looking at the kickoff time of a number of games as per Jegwe and M’bwana’s remarks, an immediate conclusion is the game have been played played for a little time.
If the games starts at after 4pm expect it to be finalized around 6pm which is impossible with the venues used in Chipiku League where there’s no floodlights. The time is definitely trimmed to less than 90 minutes of play which is not enough to give true reflection of the results.
