Kudjoe Fianoo, Ashgold CEO, has stated that both the FA Cup Committee and the Ghana Football Association (GFA) were never committed on the issue of compensation leading to the stand-off that occasioned their boycott of the FA Cup match against Kotoko last Sunday.
He said the boycott could have been avoided had the committee took pains to resolve the matter, insisting that the committee knew that Ashgold were not going to show up.
The miners failed to turn up for that quarter-finals FA Cup duel, insisting that the shifting of the game from the Baba Yara Stadium to the Accra Sports Stadium would come as an extra cost to their budget.
The match originally fixed for the Baba Yara Stadium was shifted at the very last minute to Accra following a ban on the venue for Kotoko’s home games.
According to Fianoo, when it became clear that the match would be moved from Kumasi to Accra, Ashgold in a letter dated April 10, 2014 wrote to the GFA drawing its attention on the extra cost to the club.
In the said letter, the club stated that had the game been at the semi-finals of the competition, it would have honoured it without complaining, because the rules stipulated that FA Cup games at that stage should be honoured in Accra and Kumasi.
He disclosed that later, George Afriyie, a member of the Emergency Committee of the GFA, called to inform him that the FA had decided to offer Ashgold GH¢5,000 out of which GH¢2,000 was compensation for playing Kotoko at the Sekondi Sports Stadium in a Premier League game following a similar ban on Kotoko last season.
“Ashgold did not receive any compensation and the committee knew that we were not going show up, yet went ahead to honour the match’, he stated.
