The Glamour Boys trail fourth-placed Orlando Pirates by over 2000 votes and appear in danger of not qualifying for this charity event. It will be the first in the 20-year history of the Charity Spectacular that Amakhosi had failed to make an appearance, should they miss the cut.

Mamelodi Sundowns have been leading the votes since the opening day of voting and were sitting on 28661 by Wednesday with Black Leopards, who barely survived relegation on second place with 24955 votes. Bloemfontein Celtic were comfortably sitting on third place with 23192.

The Charity Cup is decided by a phone line voting process with the four most popular teams, or at least those that are able to gunner enough votes, participating in the one day soccer spectacular staged at Soccer City.

So far the race appears to be between the five frontrunners and Chiefs, who have won this competition a record 10 times, cannot drop any lower as sixth-placed Moroka Swallows have only managed 2422 votes. Relegated Manning Rangers are seventh (713 votes) and Santos eighth (653 votes).

Amakhosi boss Kaizer Motaung, concern at the current voting process, reiterated calls to overhaul the current selection system.

"I am not really worried because I know why the situation is as it is right now. There is a lot of foul play in the voting process and some of the clubs are hell-bent on making sure they get through by all means to the extent that they will go out and hire people who will sit on the phones and vote for 24 hours," said Motaung.

"We hope that sanity will prevail because at the end of the day it’s not only about the voting but also about bringing people to the stadium on match day. We have seen in the past where teams managed to get more votes than us in the build-up to the event only to fail to match that on match day. That actually tells a story of what is happening behind the scenes."

There have been numerous views on how the Charity Cup voting problems could be overcome with some suggesting the league winners as well as one of the major cup winners as automatic entrants. But Motaung believes even this suggestion might not help the situation.

"Personally I don’t think Chiefs and Pirates should be engaged in the voting process. The two teams should get an automatic place. The other teams should then get involved in the voting process with the top two joining Chiefs and Pirates. That seems to be the only logical thing to do," he said.

Last year’s Charity Cup took place at the FNB Stadium on July 31. After five weeks of frantic telephone voting by the soccer loving fans, Sundowns, Leopards, Chiefs and Pirates were confirmed as the contenders for the 2004 Telkom Charity Cup.

The draw pegged Chiefs against Leopards in the first semifinal and Sundowns against Pirates in the second semifinal but it was Sundowns who emerged victorious in the final beating Chiefs 5-4 on penalties.