We have swallowed a killer pill!
Here we are with all sorts of unwholesome repugnance and uncertainties in our future sporting growth. This is a busy Olympic Year, and in our preparation towards the Rio Olympic Games, I really wonder how many of our numerous athletes will actually qualify within the acceptable Olympic standards to be accredited with the qualification tag for the summer event.
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Unfortunately, our football teams, both men and women, did not qualify, leaving other African countries who qualified within the quota to go there and showcase their capabilities. We know a whole lot of soccer fans , both young and old Brazilian citizens will ask "why, Ghana, why?", and the answer will be that we could not keep the pace. Is it not two years ago that the Black Stars were in Brazil for the World Cup debacle?
Japanese football fans who saw the Tokyo Olympiad in 1964 will be wondering what is ailing Ghana. Do we really have an answer to the myriad of problems that has engulfed this country in whic
We were at the Tokyo Olympic Games with a football team, led by a general captain in the person of Aggrey Fynn of blessed memory, and that was the contingent every Japanese citizen young and old loved to watch and shouted "Africa, Africa on seeing our flag at the opening ceremony which showed the recognition given to this country as the beacon of hope for Africa.
But over 50 years after that event look at the poor state of our sports, and what do you expect the sports fans in Rio de Janairo to say at the big Games?
Will it not be the pale shadow of the same Ghana we saw in 1964 where we then went as African football champions (of course those were the days of no age groups) and the Black Stars represented the nation?. It must sadden the hearts of all sports followers everywhere as sports development is supposed to grow from the lowest to the highest stage with record-breaking performances from one Olympic Games to another.
I overheard the National Sports Authority (NSA) Director-General, Joe Kpenge on one of the radio stations that only one Ghanaian athlete has qualified within the Olympic standards, and that there are some beacon of hope that perhaps during the up-coming World Indoor Athletics Championships scheduled for Portland, Oregon in the United States of America in March this year, a few could come up as possible qualifiers.
The selected athletes from Seven-Four Sports Club Academy might make the grade as they go in to compete in 60 metres, 800, 400, 3000, 1,500 and 5000 metres. Even then the organisers were bemoaning their fate in financial constraints.
It must be noted that only young Flings Owusu Agyepong was the Ghanaian athlete who participated in the last World Indoor Games held in Doha, Qatar.
Perhaps, out of the blue some financial assistance might go in to help the cause of the Oregon campaign. I know Olympic Games projects such as taekwondo, judo, wrestling, volleyball and others, but down here our main focus is football, boxing and athletics, and the world know us for that. Anything else will not get the same enthusiasm.
In recent times, our paraolympic sportsmen have shown their capabilities and have won some medals for the nation, but then we are all looking forward to our normal runners, jumpers and throwers we develop at our local level from schools and academies.
We had nothing to show the world immediately after independence in 1957, there were those perceptions among the citizenry that if all go asunder, sports alone will bail us out of our shame. But as at now, the perception does not hold water anymore, and the clarion call at this crucial moment is that we must identify what is worrying us, who the devil is fighting against us, and what bitter pill we should swallow as a nation to neutralise the killer disease that is gnawing at our progress in all directions, physically, economically, socially, morally, mentally and spiritually.
But, please, who is there to take notice of this? The last straw that has broken the back of the camel must be our football. People are doing public relations work for the organisers of the game, but to what extent can we convince the world that the game is improving when in actual fact, we have not won the African Nations Cup since 1982, and none of our clubs has won the League Champions Cup since 2000 while Hearts of Oak won it, won the Super Cup in 2001 and the Confederation Cup in 2005.
Kotoko did it in 1971 and 1983, and are called the club of the millennium. Is this not the result of the swallowing of the killer pill, and don't we need a pill to neutralise the killer poison? If this is light-mindedness, only the Almighty will judge.