Support lower leagues, urges Petra

By Jonah Onyango  

Football Kenya Federation (FKF) officer in charge of national leagues and competitions Dorice Perta has urged sponsors to come on board and support the Division One league.

Petra said most of the teams in the lower tier leagues are self supporting and in most cases find it difficult to honour their fixtures and sustain their players.

“Local football can only grow when we have in place strong lower leagues. However, it is unfortunate that leagues like FKF Division One, which acts as a feeder league to the Kenyan Premier League (KPL) clubs have no sponsors,” said Petra.

“There are a lot of talent in the lower tier leagues but most clubs, which happen to be self supporting, sometimes fail to honour all their fixtures due to lack of proper funding. As a result, many clubs end up being relegated from the leagues,” she added.

Petra, however said the federation has done a lot in streamlining football administration, a fact she said, has led to the rise in football standards besides giving the youth to have their talents tapped and nurtured.

“With good management in the federation, we can now focus and manage clubs with fewer misunderstandings as opposed to the past where promotion of teams to KPL had a lot of complaints,” Petra told FeverPitch.

“Despite the many challenges, faced last season as a federation, we managed to run a very competitive Division One Men’s league that resulted in the promotion of Bandari and Kakamega Homeboyz to the KPL,” Petra said, yesterday.

She appealed to municipal councils to improve and construct new playing grounds within their areas of jurisdiction since some of them are in poor states. 

Petra said the number of teams in the FKF Division One Men’s league will be reduced to 36 from 40 last season for easy administration of the league.  She said Western and Eastern zones will each produce 18 clubs.

She also appealed well wishers to come on board to support the Women’s Premier League, which she said, is slowly gaining popularity and producing a lot of good players.

Meanwhile, South Africa, tumbling down the Fifa rankings and given little chance in their home tournament, can “shock people” and make a bold bid to win the African Nations Cup, coach Gordon Igesund said yesterday, adds Reuters.

Igesund said his squad, hard hit by injury, the retirement from international football of captain Steven Pienaar and a match fixing scandal that led to a temporary suspension of top officials, was on the right path.

“I’m very confident that the team can go out and shock people,” he told a media conference yesterday as the South African squad continued their pre-tournament preparations.