THOUGH they would have loved to see Bloemfontein Celtic play in the Telkom Charity Cup at Ellis Park on August 1, Siwelele are hesitant to vote for the team.

THOUGH they would have loved to see Bloemfontein Celtic play in the Telkom Charity Cup at Ellis Park on August 1, Siwelele are hesitant to vote for the team.

They are still disenchanted with the way Celtic missed out on qualifying for last year's tournament. The Free Staters were beaten by Orlando Pirates, thanks to a last-minute rally by the Ghost to ensure their side qualified for the season opener.

Responding to Sowetan's back-page lead story yesterday about why Siwelele are not voting in throngs for Celtic, a number of devotees responded through e-mails, stressing that they were reluctant to vote this year to highlight their disillusionment with Celtic's treatment last year.

"We did everything in our power to vote for our team last year and we did pretty well on the voting charts only to be denied a qualification through some questionable means," read one e-mail.

Added another: "Rona Masele (we Celtic supporters) are not interested in this Charity Cup thing after last year's daylight robbery. We were told that we stopped voting at 10pm and that was two hours before the voting lines closed. This was how we missed out."

Telkom's sponsorship manager Nakedi Chiloane was not available for comment .

Celtic received less than 400 votes yesterday for a total of 3962 . They stayed sixth on the chart lead by AmaZulu (52720), who were followed by Sundowns ( 33301), Pirates (26760), Kaizer Chiefs ( 25095) and Aces (6824).