Dejected Kenyan juniors leave camp

NAIROBI, Feb 15 (AFP) - A dejected Kenya under-17 football team broke training camp Saturday afternoon, a day after being disbanded by the country?s sports minister for overage cheating.

Having eliminated Eritrea and former World champions Ghana, the team was preparing to host Ethiopia on February 22 in their return leg tie for the Africa junior championships.

Ethiopia won the first leg 2-0 in Addis Ababa on February 2 and the winner would qualify for the finals in Swaziland later this year.

The team?s dream of being the first Kenyan under-17 side to reach these finals was thrown out of the window following revelations by Sport Minister Najib Balala on Friday that 40 percent of the players were overaged and apologised to the Ghanaian Football Federation.

The players wept openly after they were informed about their fate and the national soccer governing body, the Kenya Football Federation (KFF) has remained tight-lipped over the fiasco.

But the management of one of Kenya?s top clubs Mathare United has strongly supported the minister?s courageous move.

Bob Munro, chairman of Mathare United, which is respected for its youth football development in the country, was the first person to point the anomaly in the youth camp.

"It sadly seems the cheating was on a scale which would easily and soon have been detected by CAF and FIFA," Munro said in a statement, supporting the team?s disbandment.

"Then all our national teams and clubs would definitely have been banned for at least two years, and even worse, the sporting reputation of our country would have been destroyed for a decade," he added