According to a statement made by the club coach Gavin Hunt on the club’s website today, Wits will “play against Kaizer Chiefs on Tuesday 9th of Febuary 2016, and then the first leg of CAF is on the weekend of the 12th-14th. We will have to leave some players behind and there won’t be any fatigue involved as the players who play on Tuesday won’t be playing over the weekend.”
This is the very same Wits team that crashed out in the first round of the very same competition earlier this year when they lost to Royal Leopards of Swaziland after leading 3-0 from the first leg.
I remember very well, a week leading up to their match against Royal Leopards, I called Wits CEO Jose Ferreira asking if the club was going to release the list of Wits’ registered players for the competition. But the answer was an emphatic no.
And it came as a surprise when I saw players like Katlego Pule, Kees Kwakman, Phumlani Ntshangase, Markus Lecki, Tebogo Moerane, Vincent Pule, Sameehg Doutie, Sandile Zuke, Ben Motshwari, Sthembiso Ngcobo and Chris Katongo in the starting lineup of the first match. Of course, a lot of those players were later released.
Fortunately Wits won the match 3-0 but strangely lost the return leg in Swaziland by the same scoreline and crashed out of the competition on penalties.
And now the team will not use some of the players they will be using against Kaizer Chiefs to avoid fatigue. What fatigue is he talking about because PSL players get more breaks than Grade R students?
It is very clear that the reason Bidvest Wits will not be using those players is because they do not want to participate in the CAF Confederation Cup and do not want to proceed any further than the first round, and it won’t come as a surprise if they are knocked out in the first round of the competition.
While teams like Orlando Pirates sacrifice everything by going all out in CAF competitions, a move that helps PSL clubs in CAF rankings, clubs like Bidvest Wits are a disgrace who do not deserve the honour to take part in the competition. This arrogance has a negative impact on South African football.
While Nedbank Cup winners and the team that finishes third in the League qualify for the CAF Confederation Cup, it is still up to the PSL to decide which teams they should enter in the competition.
If Bidvest Wits consider playing in Africa as a waste of time and resources, they can easily inform the PSL to enter another team in their place instead of wasting our time by going through the motions in a competition they do not want to participate in.
In the name of the dignity of South African football, a team that does not want to participate in a CAF competition should not be entered.