Perfect beginning, perfect officiating
The classical and perfect beginning of matches of the 2015/2016 season has received tons of praises and commendations from all followers and commentators of the game. For once, the renowned and veteran sports commentator, Kwabena Yeboah joined the praise-singers. He watched the WAFA / Kotoko match at Sogakope and the Hearts / New Edubiase encounter at the Accra Sports Stadium.
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And he could not hide his good feelings for the standard of play and even for the officiating referees. For some unexplained reasons, matches between Kumasi Asante Kotoko and any other Premier League club have always been top liners and hotly contested.
The same can be said of matches involving Accra Hearts of Oak and any other Premier League Club. The two clubs, Kotoko and Hearts are indeed unofficial standard bearers of football clubs in the country.
Indeed, in any season that the two clubs under-perform, football in general under-performs. A classic example is the past season when Ghana as a nation could not qualify for the continental African CHAN Tournament.
The all-round praises heaped on the standard of play at the beginning of the season were extended to the performance of our referees. FIFA referee, William Agbovi who was at the Sogakope match, Cecil Fletcher, who was in the middle during the Hearts and Edubiase match and last season’s referee of the year Seidu Bomison came up for special praise and mention.
Those three matches were actually the matches of the Match Day One. So far, the high standards have been maintained. The Referees Committee, headed by Nii Komiete Doku deserves commendation for the matured appointments made.
The Committee actually put its best foot forward by starting the season with most of the elite Ghanaian referees, including referee Patrick Kyeremanten who handled the Tema Inter Allies / Aduana match.
The brand new PLB Chairman, Ashford Tettey Oku and his team deserve our praise. TT, as he is popularly known, should be full of joy. In commending the standard of play and officiating, one should not forget the appreciable return of football fans to the various stadia.
The standard of play have been high with the eight league centres producing a total of clean goals.The Good Old Book comforts us that all things work together to our good.
Perhaps, the litigation and delay in starting the season have combined to wet and increase the appetite of players and their fans to troop to the various league centres.
But we should all learn from the factors that contributed to the litigations and the delay.
We should all endeavour to keep and maintain the good standards expected to us. It was remaricable that even those who could not win their opening matches went home painfully satisfied that they did not deserve to win.
Kotoko’s high profile coach, David Duncan, confessed that while the players of WAFA took their chances, his players did not do same. Again, the Chief Executive of New Edubiase blamed his loss on his not too experienced players as he had lost most of his old and experienced ones. That is the spirit of the game.
Football matches always end in wins, draws or losses. All stakeholders should be good losers and winners. The lessons in football are just like the lessons of life. People fall but the important thing is to rise again and learn from the good lessons provided for the fall.
The situation whereby nobody or no team wants to lose is indeed natural. So long as the game of football exists, there would be winners and losers.
There are so many teams that have been through relegation to lower divisions but have bounced back. There are also a few of them that have fallen from Premier to Division One and gone into oblivioum only to make the history books.
Those teams that fall out very regularly have to learn from their shortcomings and failures. The best thing is to take hard looks at themselves and their leaders.
Some teams have been around since 1935 and even 1911, and they have never been relegated to any lower division. This is so in every league system.
We must all challenge ourselves to keep and maintain the commendable standards that we have set for ourselves so far. Our referees should continue to display the professional standards that they have exhibited. They should remain unbiased in their application and implementation of the Laws of the Game.
Refereeing requires courage, firmness and fairness. The referees committee should ensure that only competent officials are appointed to officiate, especially in the tough matches as they did for matches played so far. At the same time, the clubs and their managers should play their matches in very competitive and professional manner. The perception created towards the end of last season that some teams ganged up together to play matches of convenience should be avoided.
Above all, they should leave all match officials alone to handle their matches fairly. It should also be helpful if our football fans would display good sportsmanship and accept the results of their matches. The standards have been set and we must all endeavour to keep and maintain them.
And may we end this season without looking over our shoulders if a team would go to court or not.
