A WEEK after moving to first division side Monitronics, Namibian national team side-kick, Rudi Louw, has cancelled his intended move and gone back to champions, Orlando Pirates.

The diminutive midfielder became one of the few players to succumb to the pressure of the league’s kick-off announcement, which managed to catch most players unawares, as he reversed his move.
By Monday, Monitronics FC coach Woody Jacobs had no knowledge that Louw had packed his bags before kicking a ball for the first division side, as news filtered that the league would definitely kick-off next weekend.
“There are too much issues with these contract stories (at Pirates). I just want to play and we needed to agree,” said the player, whose move to Monitronics might have been an indirect warning to Pirates management who were delaying in giving him a contract.
But the Namibian Premier-League still maintains that although the transfer window is closing on November 6, no club has yet come forward to register players.
“We have 25 unregistered players on our list and if nothing happens this week they won’t be able to play come kick-off because they are not attached to any clubs,” said Tovey Hoebeb from the NPL.
Civics, who formerly signed Louw in the 2006/7 season, defended most teams’ delay to register players, claiming they were waiting for confirmation as to when the league would finally kick-off.
“We have more than six players that have resigned from their clubs but they are yet to be registered under us, because we were waiting for the date and now that we know the date, we hope to release one huge cheque at the end of the month,” said Civics team manager, Paul Stramis.
Among those to be signed by Civics is Donnelly Nell, Pineas Jacob (all Ramblers), Moses Katjiteo, Brian Bantam and Jerome Louis (all Black Africa). The three time former champions have also offloaded seven players from their camp, “and those players are not yet registered with new clubs also.”
With regard to Louw, Stramis said the player had signed for Pirates in the 2007 season, before moving to FC AK in the South Africa first division – Mvela - before returning at the end of the season.
“When he came back from South Africa this year, we wanted to recruit him again and got him the international clearance form (ICT); he started training with us. Later we learnt that he had a contract with Pirates already and when we cancelled the deal, we started hearing of Eleven Arrows and then Monitronics, now you are telling me that he is back at Pirates,” Stramis said.