Seeing Moroka Swallows suffer a second relegation in a space of a year has left me with a heavy heart.

It's a sad moment not only for me, but for the people of Soweto, who for years have seen their club decline from being one of the top three in the country to a sorry state that they are now.

I'm not exaggerating when I say Swallows used to be up there with Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs. We used to attract the best players in the country to compete with the top teams.

But in the past 17 years following the arrival of Leon Prins at the club, it has been downhill.

I did warn then owner, the late David "Pine" Chabeli, that Prins would take us nowhere when he arrived in 1999, because Prins had confessed to knowing pretty little about football.

He was a rugby man before, and I advised Bra Pine against making him the chief executive and selling 42% of the club's shares to the German consortium which backed him. Had he listened, we wouldn't be in this mess, created solely by Prins.

As soon as he arrived, we could no longer afford to keep our best players. They were being poached by other teams and Prins did nothing about it.

Our scouts were, to their credit, able to find talent elsewhere to boost the squad, and we even went to the extent of winning a couple of trophies, such as the Absa Cup (2004) and the MTN8 (2012).

But we never held onto players because they were always given short-term contracts, and as soon as they expired, they went to other teams. In other instances we sold our promising talent, such as Ramahlwe Mphahlele and Sibusiso Khumalo. How can you compete with the best when all you do is to discover talent and let it go?

Now we have not only been relegated for a second time, we have serious financial problems. Apart from the fact that players were not being paid this season, I hear that the South African Revenue Service is owed millions by the club.

I'm told SARS garnisheed a portion of Swallows' monthly grant from the PSL, in an attempt to settle a huge tax bill dating back some years. That meagre PSL grant will not be there in the ABC Motsepe League.

The fact that Prins now wants to sell the club puzzles me as one of the minority shareholders. It would be impossible for him to do so without our involvement. Any sale would have to be subject to a thorough financial audit of the club's books, for potential investors to know precisely what they are inheriting. They could be taking over an empty shell.

It's quite sad that, when we are about to celebrate our 70th year of existence next year, we will be doing so in the amateur ranks of the ABC Motsepe League. Ultimately, there's no doubt that we will end up like other fallen clubs, such as Vaal Professionals, Pimville United Brothers, Pretoria Callies, African Wanderers, Hellenic, and Benoni United.

This is utterly heartbreaking, but what is even more sad is that it could all have been avoided.

Gxowa, who is a Swallows minority shareholder and served as a club director until 2004, was speaking toNkareng Matshe