Former Kunene governor Marius Sheya has called for total uniformity for athletes in future editions of the annual Nedbank Namibian Newspaper Cup.
The former governor of the host region-turned-football champion over this year’s Easter weekend says the tournament has a lot of value – not only on the soccer pitch or netball courts.
Speaking to Desert FM recently, Sheya said the event is a platform that should be fully guarded and promoted to grow from strength to strength.
“I have also raised it with the organisers. We cannot have sports people in our midst of which some don’t even have tracksuits.
“Some of the regions don’t have team T-shirts and some regions are begging for payment of coaching sessions,” he said.
“We must put a lot of the money we get from the sponsors into these players.”
Sheya said this would give the athletes some dignity when competing.
“When players see the other guys are a bit enhanced or improved, it also breaks the athletes’ morale,” he said.
“It’s one of the biggest issues Nedbank Namibia has to introduce in terms of uniformity for all regions.”
Sheya said supporting all regions financially to be able to participate in this particular cup would be a welcoming gesture.
“The challenge of funding regional teams is something that needs to be addressed,” he said.
“The Nedbank Namibian Newspaper Cup is a proper and spectacular event and a good platform to expose not only the players and athletes, but also the technical teams.
“I think my takeaway from this year’s edition is how one coordinates with government institutions and the private sector to be able to raise resources and be able to upgrade whatever needs to be renovated,” Sheya said.
“My second take from organising the tournament is that I also told the local organising committee members to use that platform to address the shortcomings we have in terms of the social facilities at our disposal owned by our institutions.”
He said this year’s edition featured 720 athletes and the committee procured 720 beds and mattresses while the hostel rooms were tiled.
“We decided to leave a legacy that one day we can say the newspaper cup brought to us these needs we had to address. It’s infrastructure development that really gets done by hosting the newspaper cup,” Sheya said.
He said the tournament adds socio-economic value to hosting towns.
ADDITIONAL SPORT CODE
Sheya said the Nedbank Namibian Newspaper Cup should include another sport code, like basketball, going forward.
“It is the only platform where I’ve seen a rural child from (Okangwati) coming to play at a standard where not only the national team coach can see him, but also football clubs’ coaches.”
The former governor said introducing a new sport code would make the newspaper cup bigger, better and more conducive to talent scouting.
Namibia Football Association acting secretary general Cassius Moetie and the association’s president, Robert Shimooshili, have also suggested in the past that a new sport code, like boxing, be introduced in the future.
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