Chiefs along with Orlando Pirates, Free State Stars and Bloemfontein Celtic were expected to participate in the four-team daylong event, which is the culmination of a weeklong cultural festival, which takes place annually in the Free States largest city Bloemfontein.

The Mangaung cultural festival as it is known attracts visitor from around the Free State in the first week of October each year, the festival is rounded off every year with the Macufe Cup.

Chiefs first participated in the Macufe Cup in 2003 when they won the event and retained their title in 2004 and 2005 but due to fixture congestion were unable to take up an invitation to play in the 2006 event.

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While talking to kaizerchiefs.com and explaining Chiefs' reasons for pulling out of the event, Amakhosi team manager Bobby Motaung cited the following as reasons behind Chiefs withdrawing from the event: “There were two major reasons why we chose not to travel to Bloemfontein for the Macufe Cup, the first being that we could not agree on terms with the tournament organizers."

"With the tournament taking the same format as the Telkom Charity Cup, it meant that teams face the possibility of playing two games in a day, which further motivated The Amakhosi’s withdrawal from the event," Motaung explained.

“Secondly after a number of discussions internally we felt that the structure of the event was more suitable as a pre – season event, at this stage of the season we could not take the risk of playing in a tournament where we could have ended up playing two games in one day.”