PLE TO BAN UNRULY FANS

MBABANE – The Premier League of Eswatini (PLE) will no longer allow misbehaving supporters into stadiums.

This was revealed by PLE Football Manager Pat Vilakati when addressing the media during the Player of the Month presentation ceremony, which was held at Sigwaca House yesterday. The PLE and MTN Eswatini were presenting Green Mamba’s Mxolisi Mkhonto and Milling Hot Spurs’ Bandile Shongwe for their outstanding performances in the month of January.

They play in the MTN Premier League and National First Division (NFD), respectively. The seasoned football administrator said the escalating number of violent cases during games under their banner had been noticed by the organisation and they were working on a mechanism to eradicate such from happening in stadiums.

“We are in a process of working with teams to ban those supporters who incite violence during our games. We will try and identify those implicated on cases and ban them from matches, as a way of teaching them a lesson that we strongly condemn such unsporting conduct in our games,” Vilakati said.

He lamented that teams paid heavy fines for conducts done by certain individuals and some were made to play games behind closed doors due to violence started by supporters. Mbabane Highlanders were the first to play their category ‘B’ game against Tambuti on an empty stadium for the mayhem that occurred at Mavuso Sports Centre late last year. Mbabane Swallows also played against the same Tambuti without fans last week at the Prince of Wales Sports Ground. There were also no fans in Swallows’ game against Moneni Pirates yesterday.

“The banning of supporters from watching their teams comes with negative impact on the coffers of the clubs, as they lose gate collections on the day,” he said. On another note, the PLE highlighted that they were happy  about how the games progressed in the first round of the 2022/23 MTN Premier League season. It is worth mentioning that Moneni Pirates and Manzini Wanderers once banned some of their supporters from watching games after exhibiting conducts which were not allowed or good during matches.

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