A lot of hype was created ahead of the long awaited Fellowship Association of Malawi (Fama) trophy final at Civo Stadium in Lilongwe last Saturday which saw Blue Eagles triumph over Big Bullets through post match penalties.

The game was supposed to be played last month but it was postponed to the 6th of this month as the country was mourning the late president Bingu wa Mutharika who was buried on April 23.

Although this is a charity bonanza, I expected a lot taking into consideration that the winner was going to pocket K3 million, but what did the fans see, an ugly game.

The two teams had not met in a final for 17 years and everyone

thought that was a precursor to an exciting match but fans were disappointed to see a match that was worse that a training session.

The players who featured for both teams do not even deserve a place in the national team because they were a disgrace. It is not surprising that national team coach sticks to the same old players because the current crop does not seem to inspire much confidence.

Fans came in droves and hours before kick-off the stadium was already brimming with anxious fans eager to cheer their clubs to glory .

It should be noted here that people in Lilongwe love soccer and they do sacrifice their time to watch and support local football compared to fans in Blantyre.

It has been a long time since I watched a local game especially at Civo Stadium in Lilongwe. The last time was when Flames played against Botswana in a friendly during Independence celebrations.

But my return to Civo was not as spectacular as I had anticipated. The match lacked all the ingredients of a final and if what I saw was anything to go by, then our football standards are light years behind.

The players displayed abject deficiency in skill, technique, mental capacity and physic.

The passing was horrible, the dribbles if any were forced and basic, the ball controls appeared as if the ball had

hit a wall, the goalkeeping was worse than Chelsea's Turnbul handing the ball to Jonjo Shevey against Liverpool on Tuesday night.

No wonder some people never even finished the game as they left at half time. Why should one continue to watch a match that is not attractive and the players do not have the imagination to produce quality football?

Players from the two teams completely failed to weave passes together. This was grab and smash football and to borrow the words of Chichewa commentators during commentary, unali mpira wa 12 koloko.

You could not differentiate which team was Bullets likewise Blue Eagles which failed to use home ground advantage.

As I had left the Stadium earlier I was surpised Egales had won the match because they were the worst than their red accomplices.

I failed to see the so-called classy Peter Mgangira on the day and I failed to see the exploits of Fischer Kondowe except a few flashes where he delivered some crosses in the box.

With the Flames looking ahead to more games in June, we could have been seeing the best from Super League players.

The Flames have a huge mountain to climb in June, kicking off the 2014 World Cup campaign against Kenya on June 1 and a week later they will host Nigeria's Super Eagles.

On June 17  the Flames will try to upset the 3-2 defeat suffered in Ndjamena in Chad in a second leg fixture for the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier.

With all these games, we need more players and the only platform that can give us the players is our local football.

Zambia won the Africa Cup of Nations not because they had a squad full of professional players, but it used players from local clubs.

We need to emulate the good example of our neighbours. We need good local players in our clubs who can take their careers seriously and always strive to bring out their best during matches and not what I saw at Civo Stadium.