On a bumpy and dusty pitch, the performance was not great but the atmosphere offered football-starved Blantyre fans something to sheer about on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Nyasa Big Bullets and Be Forward Wanderers reserve sides settled for a 1-1 draw at BAT Ground in a scrappy affair that only burst to life occasionally but, off the pitch, football was the ultimate winner.<\/p>\n
The Chitetezo Mbaula Premier Division first-round match raked in a record K1.2 million, with K388,000 going to each team and a similar amount to ground managers, among other expenses.<\/p>\n
Hardworking and talented Tilimbike Jeke scored the opener after Bullets\u2019 sloppy defending in the 19th minute, only for Chimwemwe Yasini to level matters for the rivals minutes later.<\/p>\n
Bullets wanted to play a passing game but such type of play was not realistic on a bumpy pitch. Wanderers Reserve Coach Albert Mpinganjira got his tactics right as his charges played a direct long ball game.<\/p>\n
Bullets Reserve took their tally to 19 points from seven games whereas Wanderers remain fifth with 10 points on the standings.<\/p>\n
Reflecting on the match, Southern Region Football Association Vice General Secretary, Kingsley Simbeye, said it offered them plenty of positives.<\/p>\n
\u201cPatronage was impressive so much that we run out of tickets and we had to have some more printed. The amount realised is a record. Our previous record was K300,000 earned from a game between Bullets Reserve and Changalume,\u201d said Simbeye said, whose office also paid stewards, police, printers, match assessor and fourth officials.<\/p>\n
Overall, football won because, for once, fans of this commercial city that is lifeless football-wise came in their large numbers. They paid K500 each and filled the dilapidated venue to its seams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On a bumpy and dusty pitch, the performance was not great but the atmosphere offered football-starved Blantyre fans something to sheer about on Saturday afternoon. Nyasa Big Bullets and Be Forward Wanderers reserve sides settled for a 1-1 draw at BAT Ground in a scrappy affair that only burst to life occasionally but, off the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":67462,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67459","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\/67459","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=67459"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67463,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67459\/revisions\/67463"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}