Should referees be accommodated and fed by clubs?
In a glossy manual produced as part of the 2014/2015 Premier League PLB/GFA Awards ceremony, the PLB came out with the following recommendations concerning referees.
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A. Appointment of referees
That the appointment of referees should be done based on their true geographical location. If accepted, it means that when appointing referees for their matches, the Referees Committee must take into account the physical location and station of the referee.
This will change the present practice whereby, a lot of referees who are resident in, work in and even train in Accra but belong to other regional branches such as Volta and Ashanti will be affected. Such referees are not considered as Accra referees when they are being appointed.
Thus although in practice no referees should be appointed to handle any match involving his home station team and an away team, a referee in Accra but registered with Ashanti region can be appointed to handle a match involving an Accra based team.
My humble view is that all referees should be allowed to handle any match anywhere.
B. All matches should be reviewed
The PLB also recommends that in future the GFA Match Review Panel should review all matches. This recommendation will change the present practice where only matches with reported incidents and bad officiating are reviewed. This suggestion falls in line with the recommendation of the Match Review Panel itself to the GFA Executive Committee.
During the just-ended season it became clear that many clubs had lost the will power to report incidents of bad or poor officiating. The reason being that the clubs were scared of the reaction of such reported referees and some of their colleagues. The recommendation is good.
C. Match ban on referees
The PLB further recommends that a minimum of a ten-match ban be placed of Referees found to be guilty of bad officiating. Clearly this suggestion is being put forward because it has become obvious that the normal four-match and in some cases six-match bans placed on guilty referees have not served the purpose of deterring offending match officials from bad officiating.
However, although this recommendation is good, it should be implemented with technical bias. This is because, bad or poor officiating should be judged by the way that bad officiating affects the match and its final result.
For example, in situations where the decision for a referee affects the score line, like the award of a bad penalty-kick which results in a one-nil, two-one or a close score line that referee should receive a more severe punishment than the one giving a wrongful award of an indirect free-kick in the centre of the field of play.
There are degrees of bad officiating. To this end, the degree of sanctions should vary and correspond accordingly. Indeed, a referee who is judged to deliberately assist a club to win or draw a match should be considered not fit to be on the referees’ list at least for a season.
D. Accommodation for match officials
Another significant proposal by the PLB concerns the question of accommodation and feeding of match officials. It suggests that the cost should be borne by the home team as practised at FIFA and CAF matches.
My view is that this should be favourably considered and adopted by our GFA. The truth of the matter is that most clubs have been accommodating and partly feeding many match officials. The problem is that some referees, for their personal dignitaries and value system, refuse and dodge those courtesies. They consider their acceptance as selling their conscience and impartiality.
Such referees would either travel to the match venue on the same day and leave immediately after the match. Otherwise, they would secretly go in for their own accommodation. In some cases this behaviour generates mistrust between them and the home team which may believe that the referees are on the side of the away team.
There are many occasions and instances where referees receive these welcome courtesies from the home teams, but are able to handle their matches professionally and competently. But in some of these situations some club officials and supporters become aggrieved and threaten such good and upright match officials.
Football is developing and becoming more and more global. And since majority of the clubs are already accommodating and feeding some match officials, the earlier the system and practice becomes official, the better it would be for our game.
Fact is, the clubs cannot be policed and prevented from hosting our match officials. The important thing is that whenever these facilities are extended to our match officials they should still remember their ethics and handle their matches professionally and in an unbiased manner.
After all, our President (GFA) was once quoted as suggesting that match officials who may be offered such courtesies should receive them but ensure that they handled their matches efficiently.
The PLB has come out with a lot of recommendations to the GFA not necessarily concerning referees and the way they go about their duties. Some of them were taken care of during the just ended 22nd Ordinary Session of Congress at Prampram.
The vexed problem of which matches are official or otherwise was one of them. It is important that a declaration is made before the next season starts on the issue.
The PLB also suggests that the rules of the GFA should be put in simple language. This is very important if all those involved in the game should know and clearly understand them. After all, on almost daily basis we talk to and converse with those who draft the rules.
We all speak the “O” level English that we learnt from school. Football is not played at the courts. It is played on football fields by officials and players of common English background.
The simpler the rules and regulations are presented and understood, the less burden shall we all have, and the lesser the job of the Disciplinary and other judicial bodies of the GFA would be.
My appeal is that the PLB should re-package its recommendations and formally submit them to the GFA Secretariat for scrutiny, discussion and decision.