DIVISION ONE CLUBS CONTEMPLATS PROTEST OF THE LEAGUE AFTER SHAKY START

The Division One League is the third tier league and sits at the bottom of the leagues managed by the National office and with matches being played across the country hence considered a nationwide league and divided into two zones . We have teams in Busia travelling all the way to Naivasha, those in Kakamega travelling to Bomet, from Sindo to Nakuru, Malindi to Nairobi, Ukunda to Isiolo. In short, clubs cover quite some distance, just like their counterparts in KPL and NSL, in honoring matches. This league is as demanding and draining financially as the other two top tier leagues.

The League has never had title sponsors apart from the 2020/21 Season when the Federation announced Betking as the League sponsors and clubs were promised 500,000KES per season as grants from the sponsorship. This was short-lived as the sponsors left even before the end of that season and the Federation only disbursed half that amount and this came after clubs had stated they would not be able to continue honoring fixtures if the funds were not sent to their accounts as promised by the then president, Nick Mwendwa. The clubs were called for a meeting at the goal project and were persuaded to take half of what was promised and continued honoring fixtures to the end. Mind you the Federation, in the same season, received over 100M KES from FIFA as COVID-19 Relief fund, not even a shilling was paid to clubs or/and players.

The 2021/22 Season started under the Caretaker Committee and truth be told, while the Committee led Kenya to a FIFA suspension, they at least took the financial burden from the clubs by not only taking care of the match officials’ payments but also offered to issue grants to clubs with each club receiving about 300,000KES for the Season. Additionally, clubs did not have to pay the league participation fee and the player registration fee or affiliation fee. The season of course had its challenges but on the financial bit, it was not as pressed as before.

Come this season and clubs were back ‘home’ to the federation and alas, the first agenda was reintroduction of the payments; clubs were made to pay 30,000KES for player registration 9,000KES for club refrees and 10,000KES for Players Cards.Clubs were invited in a meeting at Kandanda house what they term as a burial ceremony. Clubs were seated listening to long stories about how Nick Mwendwa was arrested and how one Frank is a bad person, one club official contacted by Ow Sports termed it as "nonsense that was not even part of the agenda, " Nothing is said about what the federation is doing to lure sponsors or at least, as we wait for sponsors, use the millions of funding they receive from CAF and FIFA to take off some financial burden from clubs.

A source that sort anomity goes ahead to question the federation why they will never discuss the funding they receive from FIFA with clubs". That is left to the General Assembly where a few of division clubs officials (the selected few) will be taken to nice hotels, given some 30,000KES allowance to blindfold them and pass budgets that they have not even seen or approve financial statements that are cooked.

The Division one league is expensive to say the least. Most of the clubs playing in the league are either individual or community owned with few corporate clubs. On average a club would spend about 30,000KES – 50,000KES for a home match and between 80,000KES – 120,000KES for an away match. Don’t let it slip from your mind that most of these clubs are individual sponsored or community owned so raising 20,000KES is a tall order for this individual and in the case of a community, fundraisers have to be conducted for days just to ensure that the boys play.

Ow Sports contacted representatives of division one clubs in Zone B after the region experienced a record seven walkovers over the weekend and they had strong words to the federation,a furious club patron responded withb, "The federation’s executive first agenda after being reinstated was not how to improve the leagues but how to milk more money from the clubs and in their first meeting, they decided to increase the number of teams from 16 to 20 teams! Imagine struggling to raise your 6 kids then someone comes and adds you 4 more to take care of. Or imagine struggling with 6 subjects and then the teachers decided to add you 4 more subjects. Tears! The sad bit is that in as much as this was going to affect the clubs, no consultation whatsoever was done with the clubs. You are there to be seen and not to be heard".

Ow Sports has since established that it was obvious that clubs were going to struggle more than they struggled before. Others like Sindo United saw the struggle beforehand and decided they were not going to be part of it and threw in the towel. Kangemi Allstars did the same while others gave out their slots .Some of the clubs chose to stick in there with the hope that better days will come. But while waiting for the better days, the federation, as if clubs were not suffering enough, goes ahead to introduce more costs at the expense of the clubs. That a decision by a committee, decided long after the league had kicked off, that all Division one matches MUST have an ambulance and not the standby vehicles that we are used to. Again, no consultations from the Football Kenya Federation

Some of Division one clubs speaking to Ow Sports stated that they won't watch and keep quiet as clubs are being strangled to a slow death they will stand up and call out the federation for their mismanagement of the league and the game at large.

An email sent to all division one clubs and seen by Ow Sports ,can deduce the following demands that clubs are planning to submit to Football Kenya Federation :

1. The FKF NEC ought and should have consulted the clubs before making the decision of increasing the number of teams to 20. That the league as it is bloated and is too costly for clubs who get absolutely nothing in return from the federation.Important to note that it’s only in the Division One league where we had this crazy and unreasonable addition of teams which we are made to understand was to accommodate teams that are friendly to the federation executive members. KPL has 18 teams, NSL has 19 down from 20.

2. After increasing the number to 20, the federation goes ahead and again, without consultations, informs us that they will be relegating 7 teams from the league at the end of the season so as to regularize the league next season. It’s crazy to even imagine that someone sat somewhere and decided that they will have 7 teams relegated from the league.

3.Relegation in all the other leagues in the country remains as is and only Division One is affected with the NEC decision. FKF NEC decided to slap clubs with additional financial burden that is only payable by Division One Clubs. 50,000 KES to be paid by Division One clubs for Affiliation, League participation and player registration. That amount in not inclusive of the referees’ payment of 7,500KES per team per match.Other clubs participating in leagues under the national office i.e. KPL, NSL and WPL are not obligated to pay these fees that have been burdened on us. The federation in additions pays the match officials for the KPL, NSL and WPL.

It's just a matter of time before a bombshell explodes in Zone B,Ow Sports is well placed to serve all the procedings as they happenhappenhappenhappenhappenhappenhappenhappenDIVISION