‘BIRDS’ POSTPONEMENT PLEA DENIED

MBABANE – Rejected!
This is the story of Mbabane Swallows’ plea to postpone their Week seven MTN Premier League match against Rangers FC. The red and white capital city giants will be visiting ‘Bolovo’, as the Shiselweni-based side is affectionately known in local football circles. The match has been penned for the King Sobhuza II Memorial Stadium on Sunday and is expected to kick-off at 2:30pm. Speaking on national radio, the Eswatini Broadcasting and Information Services (EBIS), the Caleb Ngwenya-coached side’s Legal Advisor Welile Mabuza, revealed that they had written to the Premier League of Eswatini (PLE) requesting a postponement of the game.

The long-serving Swallows official revealed that they were expecting to officially handover the team back to Princess Lungile yesterday, but that event was now postponed as the late Umkhonto KaShaka Boss Victor Gamedze’s wife was reportedly out of the country.“As the management committee has released a statement that they want to return the team back to her and we made an appointment to see her with representatives from both sides as well as that for the players. The meeting was confirmed for 1pm today (yesterday),” Mabuza said.
He also highlighted that they then received a correspondence that the princess had an emergency to attend to in Johannesburg and is expected to return on Sunday.

Handover

“As I have highlighted that we were expecting to do the handover today (yesterday) to appoint those to lead the team into the next game, but it became clear that if she will return on Sunday, a vacuum was created and we were proactive and wrote to the PLE requesting that the Rangers match be postponed,” he added. Mabuza said the reason for the postponement is due to the fact that the players are not training and a new management is expected to take office. The PLE Acting Football Manager, Banele Masondo, confirmed that they received the Kwakhe Thwala-captained side’s request to postpone the games. “We didn’t grant them the request as it was not within the stipulated seven days of changing fixtures, as per the rules,” Masondo said.

Masondo also said they could not give Swallows their wish as the match was for Rangers, as they are the host in this game. According to the 2024/25 MTN Premier League Rules and Regulations, Article 4.3 states that should any club wish to request a change to a fixture, such request must be submitted at least seven days before the scheduled start of the match. Fixtures will only be amended in extreme circumstances at the discretion of the PLE.It is worth noting that the reigning MTN Premier League champions players had taken the team to the Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration Commission (CMAC), on allegations that they were not paid their monthly salaries.

Post your comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address:

Add your comments:

Please enter the code you see in the image:

Image:

Code: