Long trips affect Super League rookies

Super League rookies Karonga United fear long trips to fulfil fixtures have started taking a toll on their players. Karonga’s fellow rookies Chikwawa United also said long trips affect them financially. Karonga covers the longest distance than any other team in the league as it has to travel 169 kilometres to Mzuzu for home matches and 830 and 561 kilometres to Blantyre and Lilongwe respectively. They also travel to Dwangwa. Their longest trip will be to Nchalo [about 1 003 kilometres]. Karonga use Mzuzu Stadium as their home ground because there is no proper ground to host Super League matches in Karonga. The team’s coach Kondwani Mwalweni and one of the key players Green Msowoya said while they are confident about the prospects of surviving relegation, long trips have adverse effects on their performance.

“Sometimes, we cover such long trips to play two crucial games back-to-back which is not healthy on the part of the players because fatigue creeps in and in the long run it affects concentration. “I noted that in the two recent games against Epac and Kamuzu Barracks [KB]. We started well, but in the second-half I could see that the boys were physically drained,” said Mwalweni. He said departing earlier from their base is always a better option, “but it becomes a problem when you factor in expenditure issues.” Msowoya said: “Had it not been for the long distance hurdles, we could have been on a better position on the log table. “Sometimes, we travel on the very same day of the match and by the time we reach our destination, we suffer travel fatigue.” Nevertheless, Msowoya said despite such hurdles, they are determined to remain in the flagship league.

“On our part as players, we are prepared to work hard in the matches, but we leave logistical issues in the hands of the sponsors,” he said. The club’s chairperson Pezani Simama alluded to the plight of the players, adding that it is affecting them financially. “Our co-sponsors’ [Simama General Dealers and Willy Yabwanya-Phiri] plan, with the assistance of the community in Karonga, is that we should construct a standard mini-stadium where we should be playing our home games. However, the current economic situation is not conducive for such a project. “We had also planned, as a temporary arrangement, to rent hostels for the team in Mzuzu, but then there were some logistical hitches because some of the players run businesses while others are doing studies in Karonga,” said Simama. He said the team’s budget for the season was K14 million, but is likely to double mainly because of travel costs.

However, co-sponsor Yabwanya-Phiri was quoted by Zodiak Broadcasting Station (ZBS) from his base in Canada last week as saying if the team manages to maintain its Super League status this season, the stadium project will commence. “We know that it is very demanding travelling up and down because apart from draining the players physically, it also affects planning as well as finances in terms of fuel, food and accommodation. So, behind the scenes, we are planning big things,” said Yabwanya-Phiri. As of yesterday, Karonga United were ninth on the log table with nine points from nine games having won two (against fellow rookies Airborne Rangers and Chikwawa by 3-1 margins), drawn three and lost four. Chikwawa’s director Owen Chomanika told Nation on Sunday recently that his side is also financially handicapped and the biggest challenge comes when fulfilling away games. “When we were playing in the lower league our budget was in the excess of K4.5 million and when we earned promotion, it shot to K12 million, but looking at the demands of playing in the top-flight league it could shoot to double as much mainly due to travel expenses.

Soccer analyst Charles Nyirenda said the solution would be Sulom to consider negotiating with the league’s sponsor to subsidise travel expenses of the teams that travel a lot, in particular Karonga, Moyale and Chikwawa United. “That could be an alternative because in other countries such as Mozambique, Zambia and South Africa, the sponsor of the league subsidises travel costs and that is why in most cases, they travel by air so that players should not suffer the effects of long trips. “Here it is even tougher because teams have to leave a day before the game as a cost-cutting measure and by the time they go into the game, they are already tired. In the long run, it has a big impact on the standards of the game. Sulom and FAM can sit down and come up with a solution,” said Nyirenda.