The game of football is said to have four pillars. Pillars without which no organised football match can take place. Refereeing is one of such pillars. Couching, administration and sports medicine are the remaining ones.
In playing their role as judges on the football field, referees have attracted all sorts of reactions from football fans and supporters. Reactions to our referees are many and varied, but the one that worries me is the insults and bad name-callings. Now that the 2012/2013 season has ended successfully, we should pause and think of the contribution of our referees.
By their training and calling, referees do not normally defend themselves against criticisms and insults. Criticism of individual referees and their actions and performances should be accepted and tolerated. What should not be accepted and tolerated is the blanket and sweeping condemnation of all Ghanaian referees.
It is very common to hear from some aggrieved club officials and supporters all sorts of insults being heaped on all Ghanaian referees. How can all our nation’s referees be bad when we justifiably claim that we have good and competitive leagues? There were about 30 middle referees during the just-ended GLO Premier League Season. Those who bind all our referees together and pour insults on them cannot convince us that all of them were bad, incompetent and non-performing.
Definitely a few of our referees have at one time or the other performed badly. But even those who can be cited as performing poorly or below average cannot be said to have exhibited bad performance in all their matches.
One referee has recently been heavily sanctioned by the GFA for performing very badly. But even this referee had performed creditably throughout the whole of the season. If we should label our league as good, we should give the same label to the referee who helps in handling the season’s league matches.
Our commentators and their commentaries on our referees should be fair. In criticising referees they should aim at correcting and improving on their performances. In this regard, such criticisms should be specific and directed at pointing out specific faults and mistakes. Criticisms are different from insults. Decent people criticise for reforms and correction, but decent people should not insult others, for insults are not decent language and criticism.
A new culture of insults has appeared on our national scene, particularly on the political front. Young and uncultured tongues have been freely pouring insults on elderly and respectably opponents, just because of politics. It nearly reared its ugly head in our supreme court. But thank God, it was stopped through a judicial action.
I think it is time our football authorities take a hard look at insults on our referees especially on our radio stations. It is notable that our print media do not promote insults on our referees. It is mainly the FM radio stations that indulge in this social evil. The GFA and the Professional League Board (PLB) have together cleaned our league system of certain negative attitudes and practices. We used to have problems about registered and unregistered jerseys and players. Now we don’t have those issues affecting our leagues.
Blanket insults on our referees must engage the attention of the GFA. Football is a game of passion and love. And so we should not allow aggrieved and unsatisfied fans and supporters to drag the name of refereeing into the mud; especially where most of these insults are only based on pain that comes out of losing matches and not based on any proven incompetence and wrong decisions from referees.
During our days of refereeing, during the 90s, physical assault on referees was very common. But gradually and owing to certain punitive measures introduced by the GFA into its disciplinary codes, the practice has virtually died out. This has had a positive effect on the performance of our referees as a result of which now a lot of teams that deserve to win matches away from their home grounds do win their matches.
It appears that some so-called big teams have their hirelings always ready to go on air in the name of sports-callers to pour insults on referees anytime such clubs lose their matches. Such sport-callers have not been able to point out particular faults and mistakes of many officials. All that they do is to insult and insult all referees.
Such people do not appreciate the real problem that prevents our referees from handling international matches. They therefore just ignorantly conclude that all Ghanaian referees “are not competent” and that is why they are not invited to matches outside the country. Unfortunately, some coaches also join these groups of ignoramus.
All of us have the national responsibility and duty to help our football and league to grow. Objective criticisms should be accepted to help our referees develop and grow, that is my point. We need referees for our matches as we need players, coaches and administrators. In some few instances there are mechanisms and laid down procedures to take actions against them.
We should all lend ourselves to these laid down procedures and systems. That is a better and civilised way of dealing with any problem affecting our football growth and development. The various media houses, especially our FM stations, owe our football a national duty to curb and control verbal insults and assaults on our referees.
Recently, I listened to a programme one Saturday with a Tarkwa-based coach who happened to moderate a sports discussion programme. The discussion was based on analysis on the just-ended GLO Premier League. Even when the discussants did not appear to comment on the performance of referees, the moderator kept on pushing and pushing them to negatively grade the performances of the referees.
And when he was not succeeding, he himself came out to describe our referees as “inept and biased”. And this is a coach who has been relegated from the premiership to Division One coaching. To him all referees are “biased and inept”. We need criticisms for our referees’ development and growth but blanket and omnibus insults should be avoided, that is my view.
Refereeing Questions with Godsway Glah
Graphic Sports/graphic.com.gh/Ghana
