Super League clubs have asked Super League of Malawi (Sulom) to consider changing the rules so that any team that contributes at least one player to the Malawi National Football Team should have its games postponed.
The clubs made the call during Sulom’s Annual General Meeting on Sunday at Nkopola Lodge in Mangochi.
Civil Sporting Club, through its General Secretary Ronald Chiwaula, raised the issue during deliberations, saying it doesn’t matter whether a club contributes one or four players but that player is important to the club which becomes a disadvantage when playing without him.
Currently, a team’s games are postponed if the team contributes three players to the Malawi National Team.
“This rule should also apply to the clubs that contributes one or two players because if we play games without the single player, it becomes a disadvantage to us because he is very important. So, we are asking Sulom to consider postponing games even to clubs that have only made a single contribution to the national team,” he said.
And commenting on the matter, Sulom President Tiya Somba Banda said his body will engage Football Association of Malawi (FAM) to try to come up with a solution.
“We need to accept that in the modern days, things are changing and we also need to change the way we run football in Malawi. We came up with this rule because whenever our National Team is playing, the head coach would require the players to camp for almost a month and under normal circumstances, we need to stop teams from playing when the national team is playing.”
“But we are forced to play games even when the team is camping because of prolonged stay which would affect our calendar. However, we are slowly changing. The team that went to play Cameroon and Mozambique only camped for less than five days because we have been discussing with FAM’ Technical Committee which has our General Secretary Williams Banda and committee member Chimwemwe Nyirenda in it. We need to find a long-term solution so as to avoid a prolonged stay of our players in the camp, which in turn, affects our calendar,” he said.
In Malawi, only Nyasa Big Bullets, Be Forward Wanderers and Silver Strikers contribute three players or more to the national team which in turn, forces Sulom to postpone their games.
Recently, there were no games for Bullets and Wanderers for a period of two weeks after they contributed more players when Flames was at Cosafa tournament in South Africa.
