Wear the HENYEKANE t-shirt

Dear Mr Siem

A big congratulations to the entire PSL family for having given us a very exciting and successful season 2008/09. That the championship was decided on the last day of the league is further testimony to the growth and competitiveness of the PSL. In addition, a further congratulations on the PSL awards last night which were well organised and rewarded our players and teams after all the hard work of the long season.

I was inspired by the PSL chairman, Dr Khoza, when he made his short presentation before giving his award to the 2 legends, Andre Arendse and John Maduka. These players have been great servants of the PSL and really deserved the acknowledgement. I hope that many young players will look up to these players on how best to be a model footballer. One of the most exciting things about the awards was that for all the categories we were given criteria against which players were selected. This was good for us fans to know what the selectors were looking for and I can place categorically that I found the awards fair and just.

However, my biggest disappointement at the moment is the glaring exclusion of Richard Henyekane from the Bafana Bafana preliminary squad. Given their performances during the course of the season a coulple of other PSL players, in my view, should have been considered for the preliminary squad. Mabalane of Orlando Pirates, Franklin Cale of Ajax, and Daine Klate of Supersport, just to name three. Sir, the greatest honour for any player is to represent his country and when players have worked hard like the ones mentioned above they should be rewarded.

I know and appreciate that this falls outside the scope of your portfolio. Equally, I appreciate that there is no way in which all fans would be happy about the selection of players into the national team. Having said all of that Sir, I think you will agree with me that Richard Henyekane was not an ordinary player during the 2008\09 season. He was afterall one of the three nominees for the best PSL player of the season.

That is a huge achievement by any standard Sir and it is my view that to not include Henyekane in the provisional squad is a direct insult to the product PSL. In addition, Henyekane's exclusion fosters doubt to whether indeed the PSL product is respected by the selectors.

I am writing to you Sir because I appreciate that you have a good working relationship with the South African Football Association and many other role players. To that end I hope you engage your colleagues in finding ways to ensure that the selection of national players is fair, consistent, just, and acknowledges the contribution of a player like Henyekane.

As a patriot I will be supporting Bafana Bafana and at the same time will protest the exclusion of Henyekane from the national team. More importantly, I will be advocating for more transparency and accountability on the part of the selectors so that we know what criteria is used to select our players. To that end I have my Bafana Bafana shirt printed: HENYEKANE FAIR PLAY.

I hope you will be able to share with me your views on how best to handle Henyekane's exclusion and not see it as undermining the PSL.

Yours in football
Mthetho C. Tshemese
In Support of fairness and justice