Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has moved decisively to prevent ‘unwarranted withdrawals’ by clubs in this year’s Federation Cup by introducing hefty fines against any errant team at both state and national levels.
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Sports247 gathered that the NFF’s competitions department has introduced fines that will be imposed any club that withdraws from this year’s competition in order to maintain integrity of results and prevent disruptions to the match schedule.
Subsequently, all aspiring clubs in this year’s Federation Cup have been warned that they stand to be hit with a fine of one million naira should they fail to honour any match at the national level and N500,000 during the state preliminaries.
While this may be termed a preemptive step taken by the organisers even before the competition begins at the state level on the 22nd of this month, NFF officials insist clubs must know the implications before entering the competition.
This was part of the information passed across by NFF’s director of competitions, Ruth David, who also announced that all states’ preliminaries of Nigeria’s widest football competition will hold between 22nd March and 26th April.
“State preliminaries kick off on Sunday, 22nd March. Any club that fails to show up for any match after concluding registration for the competition at the state level will pay the sum of N500,000.
“Final matches in the states must be played on Saturday 25th April or Sunday 26th April, with each football association in the states and the FCT to submit two representatives for the national competition on either of these two days.
“Clubs that fail to honour matches in the national preliminaries of this year’s President Federation Cup, also known as Challenge Cup, will be fined the sum of N1m,” David revealed in a press statement to formally herald the competition.
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