Alex football has threatened to lay charges of player poaching with the South African Football Association (Safa) against the Fairmont-based Help Academy Youth Development.

Secretary general of the Alexandra Northrand Local Football Association, Mafika Morajane has called on the clubs affected by player defections or poaching by the Help Academy to come and give the Alex football body the details which can then be tendered to Safa.

Morajane said they would first take the names of the club and players to the Soweto Local Football Association to demand action from them as the Help Academy is registered through their association.

“From there we shall take the matter to Safa Johannesburg Region,” he said.

The mother body will then have to rule on the matter as the Help Academy has no clearances for all those players it has allegedly poached from Alexandra, Morajane said. He would not disclose the number of clubs nor players allegedly affected.

“We shall only know the numbers of both the clubs and players once the clubs have come forward with the list of the names of players who have since defected to the Help Academy,” Morajane said.

He expressed his displeasure at the ‘poaching’ of players by the Help Academy and urged the Help Academy to join forces with Alex football and make the local league even stronger with their expertise.

Morajane said the association once had a meeting with Mahama Musah Arthur where “… we explained our position regarding his setting up of any academy, but since then he never came back to us and the next thing we knew was that he had registered his academy in Soweto and was poaching players from our clubs.”

Meanwhile, Arthur, founder of the Help Academy Youth Development has denied ever poaching players from clubs in Alexandra but admits that he once had a meeting with Alex football where they suggested he join them.

“I was not happy with joining them as I felt I needed to be on my own and that they had not demonstrated a good development vision for the boys in the league that would have persuaded me to join. If they can do that, I will be more than happy to work with them,” Arthur added.