Moorosi Tsiane
SOCIAL media was abuzz with questions being asked in the wake of last week’s omission of Lioli coach Motebang Makhetha from the list of Econet Premier League October nominees for the Coach of the Month award.
When the Premier League Management Committee (PLMC) and Econet Lesotho launched the premier league sponsorship at the beginning of the 2017/2018 season, it was announced that there would be monthly awards to honour outstanding players, coaches, match officials and journalists.
It was announced that the Player of the Month would receive M3500, while the Coach of the Month M2500, referee and journalist of the month would each pocket M2000.
So far the teams have not disappointed with beautiful football being displayed all round.
As part of efforts to ensure transparency in the selections for the awards, the PLMC requested a panel of journalists who select a list of five players and three coaches every month.
I am one of the panelists and for that reason I felt nothing but shame when a list which excluded Makhetha was announced.
I want to take this opportunity to apologise to the Lioli coach whose side was the most consistent in October winning all their three league matches beating Liphakoe, Linare and Sky Battalion respectively.
There was a misunderstanding among us as the nominating panel which unfortunately led to the omission of Makhetha.
I am even ashamed to get into details of what transpired.
And as much as this was one person’s mistake I still believe that it is our collective failure and the five of us panelists were somehow careless.
We should have known better and submitted the correct number of nominees and that would have saved us all this humiliation.
There is really nothing that we can say or do to justify such embarrassment. We let the football community down and most importantly the Lioli coach and hopefully this was a learning curve for us.
I also want to make it clear that PLMC has really nothing to do with this mess as I have seen that there is a certain group of people who want to use this blunder to drag the league body into their petty football politics.
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