Rural Boys slams city for last-minute venue change

Mkhambathi FC management has blamed the Msunduzi Municipality for forcing them to take their Nedbank Cup last 32 fixture to Clermont’s Sugar Ray Xulu Stadium at the 11th hour, instead of Harry Gwala Stadium. According to Rural Boys management, the club wanted the game to be played in Pietermaritzburg because the majority of their supporters are live nearby, adding that the team has also previously staged its home games at the same venue. According to PSL’s Nedbank fixtures sent to various media houses, Mkhambathi FC (Safa ABC Motsepe League-KZN) was scheduled to host the Motsepe Foundation Championship (NFD) outfit at Harry Gwala Stadium on Sunday at 3pm.

The Rural Boys’ general manager, Ntuthuko Mlaba, said on Thursday that the club’s aim was to prepare for the game earlier and decided to inform the municipality first, which was three weeks ago. Mlaba claimed that the municipality also added there are some fees to be paid for using the facilities, and all agreed. “We really feel let down by Msunduzi Municipality because they were officially informed about this match three weeks ago, made the bookings and we were all on the same page.

“It is also sad not that we are forced to take our home far away to Sugar Ray Xulu Stadium near Pinetown because of the mistake made by them,” he said. According to Mlaba, red flags were raised when his management and technical staff decided to go inspect the stadium on Wednesday and found it in a horrible condition. Talking from experience and one of the residents, we decided to go see for ourselves how far they are and when we went there we were shocked or almost dropped dead.

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“We just could not believe what we saw there and we were just not convinced that it can be sorted out in three or four days. “Remember we were there on Wednesday and the game is on Sunday, so we decided to make a decision. We have been in this game for a long time now and we went safety first,” he said.

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