Lower Shire football fans will no longer watch crowd-pullers, Nyasa Big Bullets and Be Forward Wanderers, in action as the two clubs have been barred from using Kalulu Stadium in Chikwawa District on safety grounds.<\/p>\n
Stadium owners, Nchalo United Chairperson Peter Chiipanthenga, said the two clubs always have capacity crowds when they play at Kalulu and it becomes difficult to effect control measures.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are only trying to prevent a potential disaster from happening. Kalulu Stadium does not have enough space to accommodate people who follow the two teams. So, we have asked them to stop coming here for their games,\u201d Chiipanthenga said.<\/p>\n
He said Nchalo will now be playing home games against Bullets or Wanderers at other spacious venues, adding that several accidents have occurred on access roads to the stadium whenever there is a big match.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to accept the fact that our stadium was not meant for big crowds. Yes, we were getting revenue for the running of our team from such big games but we cannot compromise [on] the safety of soccer lovers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Bullets Chief Executive Officer, Fleetwood Haiya, confirmed that his team would be playing its home games at Mulanje Park Stadium, which he described as convenient as it has terraces.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we were told that Kalulu Stadium is undergoing maintenance and it would be unable to host big games,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Kalulu Stadium is one of the smallest local match venues with no terraces for spectators who watch games while standing.<\/p>\n
Bullets\u2019 home league match against Mzuni FC has since been shifted from Kalulu to Mulanje.<\/p>\n
Bullets and Wanderers, who use Balaka for home matches, are homeless following the closure of Kamuzu Stadium in Blantyre.<\/p>\n
Wanderers General Secretary, Mike Butao, Tuesday said, while they play home matches at Balaka Stadium, there was a possibility of an opponent hosting the Nomads at Kalulu Stadium later in the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt should not have been a blanket ban but rather game-by-game because it is not all games involving Wanderers and Bullets that pull huge crowds. What if Wanderers were drawn in a cup match against a small team from Chikwawa?\u201d Butao wondered.<\/p>\n
Chilomoni and Chiwembe stadiums in Blantyre were also closed to pave the way for renovations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lower Shire football fans will no longer watch crowd-pullers, Nyasa Big Bullets and Be Forward Wanderers, in action as the two clubs have been barred from using Kalulu Stadium in Chikwawa District on safety grounds. Stadium owners, Nchalo United Chairperson Peter Chiipanthenga, said the two clubs always have capacity crowds when they play at Kalulu […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":64748,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65652","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\/65652","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=65652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65680,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65652\/revisions\/65680"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}