Kukoma Diamonds coach Griffin Saenda has warned non-performing players that they risk being axed from the squad.<\/p>\n
Saenda said this on Wednesday after landing K4.5 million sponsorship from Capital Oil Refining Industry (Cori); manufactures of Kukoma cooking oil.<\/p>\n
The coach said the honeymoon was over for out-of-form players as he attempts to build a strong squad.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a partnership to protect. We can only impress our sponsor with good results. We have been given a year-long sponsorship and we want our players to fight hard to win the heart of the sponsor,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Saenda said players would be given chance to prove their prowess before releasing deemed surplus to requirements.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe players have been with us through thick and thin. It is only fair to give them [players] a chance to improve their performance. Maybe, it was lack of sponsorship which affected their form. So, we will assess their form and if they don\u2019t improve after a particular period, they will go,\u201d he warned.<\/p>\n
Currently, Diamonds have 16 players and according to Saenda, they intend to maintain the number.<\/p>\n
Diamonds captain, Carol Mtukule-Ngwira, who also skippers Malawi Queens, said the players were geared to fight for their places.<\/p>\n
Cori sales and marketing manager, Felex Cheza, said they would closely monitor the performance of the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cKukoma is a winning brand and for sure we don\u2019t want to be associated with a losing team,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Diamonds have been without a sponsor since 2010 when Electricity Supply Commission of Malawi (Escom) withdrew its sport sponsorship that also extended to football.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, during the launch of the sponsorship at Victoria Hotel in Blantyre on Wednesday, Diamonds also unveiled their new colours; red and white, replacing their tradition yellow and green.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kukoma Diamonds coach Griffin Saenda has warned non-performing players that they risk being axed from the squad. Saenda said this on Wednesday after landing K4.5 million sponsorship from Capital Oil Refining Industry (Cori); manufactures of Kukoma cooking oil. The coach said the honeymoon was over for out-of-form players as he attempts to build a strong […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8629,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8625","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\/8625","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=8625"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8630,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8625\/revisions\/8630"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}