Nomads trustees, supporters bury differences

Be Forward Wanderers FC board of trustees and the club’s main supporters committee have have made up after the former nearly  dissolved the committee last week.

This follows a meeting which they had at the weekend.

The meeting was convened barely days after trustees chairperson Rashid ‘Rashy’ Gaffar described the supporters committee as “the worst in the history of the team”, but the move to dissolve it hit a snag .

The club’s trustees secretary Patrick Jumbe and his supporters committee counterpart Wisdom Patel, confirmed in separate interviews that the two parties had patched up.

Said Jumbe: “We wanted to get to the bottom of disturbing issues such as the move by a section of the fans to lock sponsors’ offices, lack of proper communication channels, poor working relationship with the executive committee and violence at matches.

“So, we raised all these concerns during the meeting we had with them, taking into account that prior to the meeting, we had already met the executive committee.”

He said what came out clearly from the meeting was poor communication within the whole set-up, especially between the executive committee and supporters.

“For instance, the delay to pay the players and other crucial issues and we assured them that we would raise the issues with the executive committee and propose lasting solutions.

“Nevertheless, we asked the committee to enforce discipline among its members and to be in control of things so as to protect the reputation of the team,” he said.

On his part, Patel said: “Prior to the meeting, the trustees had a negative attitude towards us because they had not heard our side.

“We also presented our concerns such as the communication gap between the executive and our committee which contributed to the chaos as were being kept in the dark on some crucial issues by the executive and this, somehow led to some supporters losing their patience because we are supposed to be a link between the team and the general supporters.”

Patel also claimed that during the meeting Gaffar apologised for his earlier remarks that the current supporters committee was the worst in the history of the club. n