Civil Sporting Club have claimed that they were almost caught unawares by Tuesday\u2019s Fisd Challenge Cup preliminary round match against Azam Tigers.<\/p>\n
Civil lost the game 5-4 on post-match penalties following a 1-1 draw in regulation time at Civo Stadium.<\/p>\n
According to the cup\u2019s fixtures, the games involving Super League teams in the competition were supposed to be played between the weekend of October 7 and 8 or October 14 and 15.<\/p>\n
Civil Team Manager, Gabriel Chirwa, Wednesday said they were surprised that their game against Tigers was re-scheduled to Tuesday.<\/p>\n
He claimed that they had no time to prepare for the match after a goal-less draw against Nyasa Big Bullets in a league match on Saturday at the same venue.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe learned about the change of the dates through the social media. We only trained on Monday with a small group of players because most of them were off duty. It was not easy for us to mobilise the players at short notice,\u201d Chirwa said.<\/p>\n
He added that the loss was water under the bridge and they are focusing on the TNM Super League.<\/p>\n
Civil have gone three consecutive games without a win in all competitions, having also drawn 1-1 against Mzuni FC the previous week at Civo Stadium.<\/p>\n
Football Association of Malawi (Fam) Acting Competitions Manager, Casper Jangale, was reluctant to comment on the issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo comment. If they had followed proper procedures, I could have commented,\u201d Jangale said.<\/p>\n
The association\u2019s Competitions Committee Vice-Chairperson, Daud Ntanthiko, Wednesday said he was in the dark about Civil\u2019s complaint.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I know is that they played against Tigers on Tuesday. If they have grievances, let them write us officially and we will respond accordingly,\u201d Ntanthiko said.<\/p>\n
Tigers Chairperson, Sydney Chikoti, yesterday said Fam informed the club about the fixture on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also complained that it was at short notice but we managed to mobilise resources to honour the fixture. The good thing is that we won the game,\u201d Chikoti said.<\/p>\n
Tigers progressed to the next round after converting all their penalties before goalkeeper William Thole saved Patrick Thupi\u2019s decisive spot-kick for Civil.<\/p>\n
Be Forward Wanderers are the defending champions of the cup, after defeating Kamuzu Barracks 4-3 on post-match penalties last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Civil Sporting Club have claimed that they were almost caught unawares by Tuesday\u2019s Fisd Challenge Cup preliminary round match against Azam Tigers. Civil lost the game 5-4 on post-match penalties following a 1-1 draw in regulation time at Civo Stadium. According to the cup\u2019s fixtures, the games involving Super League teams in the competition were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":54395,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54571"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54573,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54571\/revisions\/54573"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}