Moorosi Tsiane
INFIGHTING within the management of premier league returnees, Majantja, has taken its toll on the team amid revelations that the players boycotted training to protest the failure to pay their monthly allowances and bonuses.
Majantja play LCS this afternoon in one of only two fixtures which are on this weekend.
Their assistant coach, Retšelisitsoe Matsepe, bemoaned the off-field challenges, saying they had affected his charges’ preparations for the match.
“The match could be one of the toughest for us as we didn’t prepare well because there have been some off the field issues between players and management that have been disrupting this team,” Matsepe said in a recent interview with the Sunday Express.
However, this publication has since learnt that the team only returned to training on Thursday after some of the players were paid their allowances.
Majantja Vice President (technical), Phomolo Mantutle confirmed the training boycott to this publication.
“They were not training and only started training on Thursday Mantutle,” said.
“The thing is that we have two groups of players. One group have contracts that stipulate that they will be given monthly allowances while the other group are supposed to be assisted with their needs such as school fees for students, rent and groceries. Only six players have contracts for monthly payments.
“This is not sustainable because from the beginning there was no clear source of funding to pay the players and they were being paid by some of the executive members. Unfortunately things took a bad turn when the management began to fight among themselves and those who were paying the players decided to withhold their money.”
Mantutle said that prior to their last match against Liphakoe, the players requested to share the gate takings and unfortunately the money only ended up paying only the six players as it was not enough for all of them.
He said the fall out within the management was caused by misunderstandings about their roles in the team.
“We had initially agreed that when a person comes into the team they should make their position clear as to whether or not they are coming in as sponsors but that changed along the way and some people wanted to control others. This caused the conflicts and unfortunately players were affected.”
Mantutle said they subsequently sought the intervention of the Lesotho Football Association (LeFA) who advised them to organise a special Annual General Meeting next month where they would elect a new executive committee.
“We will just play the last matches of the first round and go for elections on 7 January.
“I can’t say things are normal now but I just hope we can go on at least until the elections,” he said.
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