What the Siya crew has been told…

TS Galaxy have been in the news for the wrong reasons recently and the Siya crew has been given further insight into the challenges faced by both players and staff members.

The club recently announced the addition of a women’s team, currently competing in the Hollywoodbets Super League, but that has been overshadowed by developments behind the scenes, including salaries not getting paid, fallouts of players with the technical team, as well as staff members being placed on ‘special leave’.

Galaxy chairman Tim Sukazi has always been an ambitious man and it was evident when he bought the status of Highlands Park to get the Rockets into topflight football. From the very beginning of their journey in the elite division, the club did not want to be ordinary.

Over the years, the former agent has spent big on the club and he took it to another level by bringing in players such as Bernard Parker, Sibusiso Vilakazi and Xola Mlambo, who all would not have come cheap. Although, Vilakazi has since left and this would have somewhat eased the wage bill.

After surviving a difficult campaign last season, it was Sukazi’s mission to ensure that the club brought in quality players with loads of experience, but it meant spending much more money.

Club bosses generally say that running a team in the PSL does not bring in profit. A lot of the club bosses end up spending money from their own pocket or other businesses to keep their teams alive. Without sponsors, it becomes difficult to keep a team alive, which is why the likes of Platinum Stars, Bloemfontein Celtic and Free State Stars were sold in recent seasons.

There are a few people at Galaxy, who asked not to be named, who fear that the club could go in that direction, even though Sukazi has the right intentions of making the Galaxy brand a big one in the topflight.

“What’s interesting is that the club keeps spending and bringing in players and the club keeps spending on other things as well. There is a ladies team and that costs money,” a source told the Siya crew.

Two sources have spoken to this publication about what’s happening behind the scenes, particularly with salaries and the recent trip to Europe, where players had to sacrifice 10 percent of their salaries for the trip.

“Recently, some of the staff members and players were not paid. The players were back paid, but some of the staff members were not back paid. You can even go back as far as January last year when some of these issues of salaries (emerged). Imagine, someone like Vuyo Mere left Swallows FC where there were issues of players not getting paid and he walked into a similar situation at Galaxy,” one informant said to the crew.

A second informant explained, “At times, players don’t know when they will get paid, and they are in the dark. From what I see, I don’t think they are managing the finances of the club well. Management has not always been transparent with the players.”

The trip to Europe saw Galaxy playing against Giresunspor, Sampdoria and Dynamo Dresden. But it came at a price for the players, who are understood to not have been happy with the arrangement of having to take out money from their salaries.

The second informant added, “Obviously the players were not happy with that arrangement. There were some complaining. And it’s not like they knew about it from the beginning of the season. It just came out of nowhere. From what I understand, most of the money from the trip came from Mbombela municipality, but the players had to take out 10 percent from their salaries. The younger players who don’t necessarily earn a lot as compared to the senior players were not happy.”

It’s understood that media officer Minenhle Mkhize has been placed on special leave and was not paid his salary in January. When contacted for comment, however, he refused to comment on the matter, directing the Siya crew to management at the club.