Should home teams host referees?
I am really not sure if it is an official policy of the organisers of our leagues that almost all participating clubs host our appointed match officials when they travel to honour their appointments. Whether it is official or not, the truth is that it has been happening.
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Almost all referees and other match officials are at least granted accommodation facilities by home teams either before or after their matches. In some cases it is both before and after the match. This should be no secret. If it is a secret, then it is an open one. After I hung my whistle as an active referee, I metamorphosed into a Match Commissioner. And I sometimes enjoyed this ‘country’ on all occasions in the company of referees.
In world football this courtesy is part of the official duties of home teams and federations. Match officials travel from one country to another for international matches and they are met at airports and driven to pre-arranged accommodation facilities, mostly in hotels.
This is a global practise, a smaller scale which happens on the local scene in Ghana. On the world stage, this is a policy directive.
My question is whether this is also a local policy, gentleman’s arrangement or individual choices and practices left for individual values and conscience.
What I am aware of is that during my days of active refereeing, we were not hosted by home teams by way of accommodation, meals, etc. We actually abhorred the company and all other forms of courtesies from the clubs, whether home or away. We travelled almost ‘incognito’ and avoided any form of contact with clubs and their agents before matches.
Indeed, a referee in the middle could not be identified before kick-off. I recollect one occasion when I was appointed to run lines for the late FIFA referee, B. K. Dwomoh in a match between RTU and Sekondi Eleven Wise. From the inspection of the teams to the kick-off, I was mistaken for the man-in-the-middle. I used my whistle in calling the attention of the players and even was in possession of the ball till just before the toss of the coin.
And immediately after the match we made our way to an obscure hotel owned by an elderly man near the Gyandu Stadium. That match took place almost immediately Mr. Dwomoh had retired from his 1982 FIFA World Cup assignment. Nobody accommodated us, although Eleven Wise, the home team, won.
The problem now is that many sports analysts feel that the way teams play on their home grounds fraternise with match officials before matches affects their performance and bias. The suggestion is that some of our referees are not able to perform fairly and firmly as they try to reward home teams for other kindness and hospitalities, hand go-hand come appear to reign.
The sad aspect of this practice is that many referees have grown to accept it as part of their allowance and remuneration. As soon as they get their appointments, they expect contact calls from a home team official or agent.
Similarly, most home teams expect visiting match officials to handle their matches to their advantage, whether they deserve to win or not. I experienced this during my match commissioning days. There were so many matches that I commissioned which the home teams lost.
Sometimes the club officials became very cold and unfriendly after losing the match. There was one occasion when our bags and other things were packed from our hotel rooms and placed at the reception waiting for us.
In 2008, through a private sponsorship I went on a short course in administration at the British FA. I was then our RAG General Secretary. I, therefore, took a lot of interest in how the British FA handled referees and their affairs. With them, one of the first duties of an appointed referee was to inform the home team of his appointment and his travel schedule and the estimated time of arrival.
The culture of refereeing in Britain tolerates and encourages the policy of home teams receiving and hosting all visiting referees. I must, however, add that over there the issue of those referees favouring the home team because of its courtesies was not a problem. This is because they have so advanced in the game of football that they are better able to appreciate the chemistry involved in football.
Our cultural make-up
Perhaps the bane of our social and cultural make-up make it easier for us to have a different meaning for the courtesies extended to our match officials. I have been to many matches and indeed many referees have been to a lot of matches and were given hotel accommodation, feeding and perhaps a lot more but the home teams lost their matches and rightly so. But at the same time it is not all referees who resist the temptation to pay back or acknowledge the courtesies by way of assisting the home team. And so what do we do.
Personally, I do not see any wrong-doing, because it is a global phenomenon and practice. Again the fact that it doesn’t appear to affect the results of most of our matches. Indeed, as an individual match commissioner I can reveal that about 70 per cent of matches I had commissioned the home teams were the losers. And I knew some of them expected me to help them to win. Apart from my own value system, the fact is that no match commissioner can influence a referee to handle his match in a particular manner.
Referees and other match officials are trained to have certain mindsets for handling their matches. And majority of them have exercised this mindset.
The problem we have is that some few referees have, over the years, performed in some negative ways to soil the names of the vast majority of their colleagues. The practice has almost come to stay. Perhaps we need a complete code of conducts for our match officials. What has the PLB to say?