NCC chairman urges Hearts to break jinx

The Chairman of the National Chapters Committee (NCC) of Accra Hearts of Oak, Mr Elvis Herman Hesse, has implored the technical team and players of the club to break the jinx of being considered mere participants in the Ghana Premier League (GPL).

Expressing concern about Hearts’ performance this season, Mr Hesse stressed the need for the club to break the jinx of not winning the GPL for over a decade.

He said the only way to ensure that was to turn the Accra Sports Stadium into a slaughter house for opponents, while winning at least five away matches.

Since Hearts defeated Sporting Mirren 2-0 to win the 2009 league, they have been struggling to earn the champion club’s bragging rights.
“We have improved tremendously but the only way we can win the title is through consistency. We should win at least five away matches to remain in contention for the trophy,”  Mr Hesse told Daily Graphic in an interview
 
“Some of us have followed the game for long and I can tell you on authority that before we can win the league and break the jinx of being described as mere participants, we must win as many away matches as possible. This is what we are going to tell the players to focus on,”  Mr Hesse noted.

Describing the performance of Hearts as encouraging, he explained that unlike the Phobians’ average performances in the last decade, the current team had been winning some matches, hence the need for them to remain focused and consistent.

“We encourage the players to be focused and consistent because having played just 11 matches, there is a long way to go. And without being focused on winning matches, we cannot improve on our points build-up to win the league as expected,” he stated.

Mr Hesse said he was of the view that despite losing 0-2 to city rivals Great Olympics last Saturday, Hearts had some quality players who had the ability to win the league for the first time since 2009.

 “Some of us knew from the beginning that our team was not bad at all. Unfortunately, we didn’t start on a good note because our coach who started the league could not manage the team to win games. However, he did well to recruit very good players so the current coach has turned things around, making it possible for us to play good football to keep us in contention for the league trophy,” he added.