Marumo claim they are in Premiership to stay

Marumo Gallants president Abram Sello has vowed not to repeat mistakes that saw them suffer relegation to the Motsepe Foundation Championship two seasons ago.

Gallants bought their way back to the Premiership after they secured the status of Moroka Swallows recently in a deal which is believed to be in the region of R40m.

Addressing the media on Tuesday, Sello said there were lessons learnt from the past, one of them was not having enough quality players. He promised to start purchasing good players.

“I think in every journey we learn, we experience downfalls. As you can see the club has done well in the past,” Sello said.

“We went into the CAF Confederation Cup where we reached the semifinal. We went to the Nedbank Cup and we were the runners-up. It was a huge experience and it was a learning curve because of the resources we had in that season.

“We have to do well in the field and we have to rectify where we went wrong in the past. We will reinforce with quality players."

The club revealed that they have retained 13 players from Swallows who were still contracted to the club, while those whose contracts ended are being assessed.

Sello also clarified why they decided to move to Bloemfontein: “We are pleased to play in a place where there is a thirst for football. The people have been saying we need a club here, we want to support football and any club can come here. That's why we moved there and we will stay there permanently.”

Sello defended their decision of buying a status, rather than winning promotion.

“If the spirit has been killed, many clubs did that [buying status before] and Marumo Gallants won't kill it now while it is still in the framework of the PSL rules. We are not killing anyone's spirit. We are moving physically and permanently to the Free State and our offices will be there.”

Sello revealed that they will continue to use their name in the new season, dispelling rumours that they were planning to rename it Bloemfontein Celtic.