Kaizer Chiefs utility star David Obua received the loudest cheer of the afternoon when he entered a conference room at the up market Park Hyatt hotel in Rosebank Johannesburg on Tuesday afternoon, the master of ceremonies for the function, Television Pundit Robert Marawa, stopped proceedings to announce Obua’s entry into the room, which was greeted by an orchestra of bellowing vuvuzela’s. Obua was at the Park Hyatt Hotel as he was one of the nominees for the 2006 jet rookie of the year award.

Obua was voted by Jet Club members as their player of the month for December 2005, which put the Chiefs midfield maverick up for the coveted Rookie of the year award and the R50 000 cash incentive that went with it. Unfortunately for Obua the award did not go his way on Tuesday afternoon as SuperSport United’s Katlego Mphela received more votes than Obua.

Speaking after the event Obua did not mind losing out to Mphela “when you are up for these awards you have to look at your competition and I really feel that from all the nominees Katlego really deserved this award”.

Obua offered his congratulations to Mphela and further commented, “although his team SuperSport did not have a great season I thought Katlego really work hard and if you work hard you will also get some reward out of it”.

In other news concerning Chiefs Ugandan international coach Ernst Middendorp has made a ruling concerning Obua’s call up’s to the Ugandan National team for a number of up coming friendly matches.

The coach said on the matter “I have informed the Ugandan FA that he will not be able to play against Libya on the 13th August, with regards to the Burkina Faso game he will be released on the 27th August after our League game against SuperSport. When it comes to Uganda’s game in early September against Lesotho he will be released as stipulated by FIFA rules, as this game is an Africa Cup of Nations qualifying game and it is played on a weekend set aside for international friendly matches”.