End of the road for DPMM FC

DPMM FC'S worst fears have been confirmed — there will be no Malaysian Super League (MSL) football for them next season.

It was reported last week that the governing body for football in the country, the Football Association of Brunei Darussalam (Bafa) — along with 54 other youth, welfare and sports associations — was suspended in late November for not complying with Registar of Societies (RoS) rules.

This means that the International Federation of Association Football (Fifa) currently does not recognise Bafa as a member, and thus, DPMM cannot compete in any Fifa sanctioned competitions.

Given until last Saturday to resolve the matter, Bafa's failure to do so was discussed during FAM's Department of Competition's committee meeting on Monday night where DPMM's exclusion was one of the topics on the agenda.

"This decision is in line with Fifa regulations which state that every football club must be approved by the registar's office of their respective countries," Football Association Malaysia (FAM) secretary-general Datuk Azzuddin Ahmad was quoted as saying in Bernama yesterday.

"This is a technical problem and was caused by Bafa failing to fulfil our requirements in regards to clarifying their status, forcing us to exclude DPMM from the league.

"As soon as we found out about this problem we came up with two different fixture lists, and once we decided to exclude DPMM, we made the decision to send out the 14-team fixture list to all the teams today," he added.

All hope is not lost though as RoS on Monday confirmed that they received an appeal by Bafa to get reinstated, along with the necessary documents which caused their suspension, and have submitted it to the Ministry of Home Affairs — in whose hands Bafa's reinstatement lie in.

However when contacted yesterday, DPMM team manager Pg Waslimin PSJ Momin did not seem optimistic of the club's chances of MSL football if Bafa do get reinstated.

"Firstly, I would like to thank FAM for trying to help us out in this matter and for all the support they have given us since we started playing in the Malaysian League and I am not sure we can launch an appeal even if Bafa get reinstated," said Pg Waslimin.

"As for what will the club be doing next season, we will meet on Thursday (tomorrow) to discuss whether we will be playing in the Brunei League and what will happen to our players for next season,"