By Daily Sports on September 16, 2016

Two months ago, a group of largely unknown players representing a largely unknown football team in an unfancied part of Edo state surprised all.

Benin Warriors FC, a young grassroots team, made their debut in the Edo state league, which is the highest grassroots football competition in the state. Their chances of winning the competition didn't exist in the minds of analysts going into the league. They were simply dismissed on the basis of their lack of name recognition, their background (coming from a local government area that had never won the cup before) and their nontraditional outlook of not being led by a rich sponsor.

But the Benin Warriors youngsters were a group of fundamentally talented players who had been together for years and had a coaching team that had been working with the players right from their preteen years, as is the case of most of the players.

In the end, they shocked everyone by winning the Edo State league that was concluded at end of July. They also produced the league’s highest scorer in the person of a fleet-footed and extraordinarily good attacker Anayo Iwuala.

As is the case with most leagues in the world and with major national and statewide-competitions, the handlers of the team, led by journalist Nelson Dafe were hoping that there would be financial rewards accompanying their win in order to offset some of the bills incurred by their participation in the state league which ran into hundreds of thousands of naira, including a 45,000 naira registration fee paid to the Edo FA and also to help position the team for further challenges like the Nationwide Division three league playoffs for which the club qualified by virtue of winning the Edo State League.

Unfortunately for them, not a single naira was presented for their triumph by the Edo FA who claimed the absence of sponsors for the state league made it impossible for them to receive any financial rewards for their efforts, which would have gone a long way to motivate the very talented youngsters who could turn out to be super stars for Nigeria in the near future.

Now the Warriors are in a quagmire. They can't raise enough money to participate in the national division 3 playoffs and the Edo FA are threatening to sanction the club if they can't make it to the playoffs scheduled for September 18-24 in Ado Ekiti.

The Warriors Team Manager Nelson Dafe tells Daily Sports that they have felt ignored by people who should be in a position help the club and the players fulfil their sporting dream.

“The Edo FA informed us some days ago of the requirements to participate in the play off and for us, bearing the burden alone of representing the state is beyond us financially. Unbeknownst to us, we have been required to pay N80,000 as registration fee when we arrive Ado Ekiti and when you factor that into the transportation, feeding and accommodation costs for the players and officials you would understand that for a young team without a rich sponsor it would be impossible for us to participate without some outside help. And we expected help to come from the State who we are supposed to represent, our Ikpoba Okha local government for whom we have been the first team to win the league. We have done our best to reach people in these places but so far nothing has been given to us to assist. We also wrote to the member representing our constituency in the National Assembly Hon. E.J Agbonayima but there was no response at all,” Dafe says.

He also revealed that the Edo FA Secretary on Thursday morning threatened that the Warriors would be sanctioned if it doesn’t write to the FA to notify that it can’t participate in the playoffs by Thursday afternoon.

“We find it distasteful that rather than, at the very least, sympathising with a young and financially constrained team of young champions who were not rewarded for their state league win, they are now being threatened with sanctions for their struggles to fund a bigger venture that the nationwide playoffs represent. We think that this clearly shows some of the reasons why football is taking a nosedive in this country,” Dafe said.

Coach of the team Rex Roy Bob added: “Some weeks ago we met with the Edo FA Chairman Frank Ilaboya and he tasked us to be good ambassadors of the state. He stressed that we would be representatives of the state and not ourselves alone. Now we expect that help has to come from the state to enable us participate and qualify to the nationwide league. It would mean a lot to the players. But to end up as a sanctioned team, (we don’t know the nature of such sanction) would be demoralising and could go a long way to make a talented group of players and coaches just give up and say ‘there’s no need contributing our talents to sports development to this country’.

As at press time the officials of the team were running frantically to see if any magnanimous individual could come to their aid. But the signs looked bleak for the Warriors.

•Photo shows line-up of Edo State League champions Benin Warriors.

Source Daily Sports

Posted September 16, 2016

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