Expdonaloaded sports news... Heartland cries foul over players’ transfer

Heartland FC of Owerri has called on the Nigeria Foot­ball Federation (NFF) to probe what it de­scribed as illegal trans­fer of three of its play­ers, namely, Orji Kalu Okagbue , Osas Okoro and Bobby Clement to next-door-neighbour, Rangers International of Enugu.

The Owerri-based Pre­mier League club, partic­ularly, wants the nation’s apex football ruling body to investigate the role of the Arbitration Commit­tee in the purported re­lease of the said players without the knowledge and consent of both their club (Heartland FC) and the League Management Company (LMC).
In a statement issued in Owerri yesterday, Media Officer of Heartland FC, Cajetan Nkwopara, said his club had forwarded a protest letter to both the NFF and the LMC on the illegal release of the three players and called for an investigation into the mat­ter, especially when the league officials and some Arbitration Committee members had washed their hands off the matter.
“The three players played for Heartland last season and were regis­tered with the club for the current season before they were purportedly given one year provisional clearance each to feature for Rangers International by the Arbitration Com­mittee,” Nkwopara stated in the realease.
“The claim by the play­ers that they were being owed salaries by Heart­land is completely false as the club was up to date with players’ wages by January 16, 2015 when the three players last reported for duty after returning from the Christmas break before disappearing from camp,” he explained.
Nkwopara further ex­plained that the only mon­ey the club owed some old players was the balance of the sign-on fees for the previous season which, ac­cording to him, the play­ers had already agreed, at a meeting with the state government, would be paid instalmentally, after sign on fee was scrapped and replaced with enhanced salary package.
The club’s spokesman said that although the com­mittee never invited Heart­land to explain its own side of the story, his club, on hearing the rumour of an impending case in the Ar­bitration Committee, sent out documents to both the LMC and the committee through the NFF secre­tariat, to prove it had not defaulted in payment of the players’ wages.