Curtain to come down with a Masterly touch

BUFFALO City Football Masters are set battle it out for the Wesley Pretorius & Associates Cup tournament set to be staged at North End Stadium in East London on Sunday.

BCM Masters FA, vice-president Mandla Nyolushe, said their focus was solely on this last tournament of the season, making this year the sixth annual instalment of the cup competition sponsored by Wesley Pretorius. He said this time round they decided to change the format in order to accommodate more teams.

“We want to promote mass participation, we want all clubs to take part and stop the preliminary stages. So we have decided to have three flouting trophies.”

In cup level one trophy semifinals Zwelitsha All Stars will take on Gompo Greats (over-35), and the Gompo Greats (over-40) will go against Beacon Bay Legends.

In level two trophy final Duncan Masters will take on Stutterheim Masters. Then in the level three trophy final the loser of the first match will go against the loser of second match.

In the level one trophy finals the winner of match one will be up against winner of match two.

“We have a cup for level one, we got a plate for the level winners, and a shield for level three. So we want to have three finals on the day. And that’s how we planned this mass participation and Wesley for the past five years has been faithful and obedient to the association.”

Nyolushe said Wesley has sponsored them with trophies and medals which was a good thing for the association as they were only registering players over the age of 35 years. “The aim is to keep our players healthy and at the same time keep them enjoying what they love most, soccer,” he said.

Nyolushe said most of their players were heads of households “so we promote that kind of social cohesion and we are doing this for fun not for competition”.

Owner of Wesley Pretorius & Associates, Wesley Pretorius said he had a long history with soccer in the Border region since he played for Border at some point in his life.

“I’ve played for Border, I have played for Saints, King Spurs for many years so I’ve got love for soccer. As soon as I retired from playing it became clear to me that there were other people like me who needed something to do with their time so I jumped in.

“And the participation in Masters soccer in the Border region is comparable with anything in you’ll find in the rest of the country.”