S/A Police escort abandons Leone Stars on the highway
Over 90 percent of the people including players, Sierra Leone Football Association (SLFA) officials, and journalists that formed the 42-man Leone Stars delegation to South Africa for the team’s last group match of the just concluded 2012 Africa Cup Of Nations (AFOCN) in Nelspurit in South Africa were left to travel alone without police or any form of escort for at least three hours to the O.R Tambo Airport in Johannesburg.
The distance the official bus the South Africa FA (SAFA) assigned to the Sierra Leone contingent covered is about 300KM, under the cover of thick darkness but, the about four police cars providing escort only managed to lead the contingent just few kilometers away from the Ingweyama Sports and Resource Center where the team and officials lodged on to the high-way and turning their backs away.
The team and officials were due to check out the Sports and Resource Center at 21:00 hrs GMT (11pm South Africa time).
But that never happened until the South Africa Police assigned to Leone Stars as escort start to threaten the players with arrest before the bus finally left by 3am GMT (1am South Africa time) the next day.
The fed-up escort police, embarrassed SAFA officials joined by the angry landlady, had several quarrels with the team officials, others in the contingent and later, the players.
This is because some of the players have disappeared from their hotel rooms and other senior officials of the SLFA not around as the 21:00 hrs GMT check-out time from the centre approaches.
According to some of the players, the close to two hours stand–off between the SLFA officials and them at the resource center was due to the local FA reneging on its earlier promise to give each of the players in the team the sum of US$2000 as match bonus.
“When we drew with Egypt in Cairo, we were each given US$ 1000 as match bonus. In fact, the SLFA used to give us US$ 1000 as Appearance Fee (AF) but with the intervention of the Sports Minister he increased our AF to US$ 1500,” the players claimed.
SLFA Acting General Secretary Abdul Rahman Swarray dismissed the players’ claims as untrue.
He said: “giving bonus to players is the sole discretion of the FA Executive Committee and the committee agreed to give each player US$ 1000 as ‘winning bonuses’. Indeed, we gave them US$ 1000 bonus each for the Egypt match in Cairo as a motivation being the first group match and for them to qualify to the finals of AFCON 2012. There was no time we agreed on a US$ 2000 bonus for either away or home matches whether written or verbal. The US$ 1000 we pledge is for winning matches i.e. ‘winning bonus’.”
Meanwhile, each of the 18 players for the South Africa match received US$ 500 as match bonus, plus US$ 1500 as AF.
Credit: SWASAL, Sponsor: Mercury Int. (SL) Ltd.
By Frank Cole in Lagos, Nigeria
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