AT last, the end to the most notorious league in the world is nigh. Would it be appropriate for the organisers of a seemingly dead league to celebrate a season fraught with all kinds of abnormalities including the spilling of blood from injuries suffered b visiting teams, not forgetting matches referees who are beaten by thugs loyal to the home team’s management? It is the reason nobody gets caught after each carnage. Only one of the beasts threatening the domestic league, a high-profile official of one of the teams was caught on video. He has been banned for two years with the organisers reluctant to drag him to the police for prosecution in court.
Attempts are being made to make the troubled look beautiful despite the inglorious season where matches were abandoned with glee only to be played the next day – a few times for between six to 12 minutes all under the guise that the organisers have barred boardroom points. What this decision means is that if three players or more can have their heads broken by urchins who most times are the home team’s supporters, and the game abandoned with between three to 15 minutes, such a bloody game must be completed the next morning. At other times such incident-ridden games are rescheduled on the orders of the disciplinary committee, the federation or the league organisers as the cases may demand.
How do you celebrate the end of a season without television beaming this weekend’s matches live across the country? Or would the organisers run to Supersports to beam the game live? If the answer to this question is yes, then we need to ask the organisers what informed their decision not to renew the contract to beam matches live with Supersport lapsed? Have they suddenly realised their folly?
In this better-forgotten league season which ends on Sunday, a game was played with 38 minutes of extra time arising from an injury to the goalkeeper. Rather than the organisers shut their traps they offered laughable reasons in spite of the fact the video of the game showed the assistant referee indicating that the extra time had gone on for 38 minutes. How can any goalkeeper hold the game for 38 minutes when he could easily have been taken out of the pitch for treatment? What were other delays in the game that could have necessitated such long periods?
What do you about a league where the centre referees come up with two results? In order to save his life including those of them away, the referee calls the result before the home team as 1-0 despite signalling for the away side’s equaliser which caused mayhem. The referee gets home and writes that he gave that 1-0 result to save his life and that of his colleagues. Now that he was home, he wrote to say that the goal which he signalled as good was indeed the equaliser. It meant that the game ended 1-1, not 1-0. Don’t ask me please what the organisers’ verdict was.
Whose duty is it to invite the security operatives to match venues? Or are waiting for us to remove corpses from match venues like we have seen at Sambisa forest before we take the desired decisions to disband the organising body and stop the league until all the flaws are corrected? God forbid, if souls are lost, would these late decisions bring them back to life? No way. Why are we so cursed to always act late to issues which concern lives and properties?
What do you say of a league where it took the death of a player for the organisers to differentiate between a hearse (those cars used to carry caskets to the burial grounds) which clubs cheaply brought to the stadium as an ambulance instead of the real ambulance fitted with the right medical equipment? Isn’t strange that the organisers in the last decades haven’t been able to get debtor clubs to pay their players, coaches and officials before the commencement of a new season? Don’t the organisers know that without the players, coaches and officials there won’t be a league competition? Would it shock you, dear reader, to hear that there is a rule in the competition’s Holy Grail which mandates the organisers not to register any club still indebted to its players, coaches and officials until such debts are paid in full?
Even the simplest of tasks in getting the elite clubs to run youth teams which could also play league games either a day before the main teams’ or earlier on the same pitch their seniors use. This is how it is done in Europe. It explains the ease with which these European clubs replace their ageing stars or those burdened by injuries. These youth teams help the countries by having them pick players for their age-grade teams just as it provides the country’s Football Associations (FAs) data to plan the new discoveries’ future.
With the deluge of very poor pitches across the country, one wonders what those who religiously inspect stadia before a new season begins always see that they can’t report as unacceptable to the organisers? It is rocket science to recognise a bad pitch and proscribe it until the owners do the right things before they can play games there? Isn’t it a shame that our domestic league clubs are still battling with club licensing issues? What a pity!
A league without live television coverage amount to winking in the dark. It is the reason our clubs can’t be a variable enterprise. Need I list out what many clubs in football-crazy nations get from television rights at the end of every season?
Nothing seems to be new because these same characters run the competition yearly. Those who run the domestic game have a penchant for signing MOUs. They enjoy listening to themselves. Those with dissenting views don’t know what it takes to run the game. But this writer won’t give up until the right personnel is put in place. Rather than secure an official television station for the competition to help curb violence and carnage, the organisers watched in awe as the previous league television station stopped the contract.
A proactive league board would have accepted what the previous television sponsor offered and secured an arrangement where others could either show the games live or record them to be shown later. Sadly, some of these battered referees don’t record their ordeal in their match reports, except such scenes happen in parts of the country where the media presence can overwhelm the influence of desperate club managers, owners, and, sometimes, sports commissioners.
I don’t like to disparage the domestic league because sports, albeit football, is one of the few platforms where Nigeria can be ranked with world-beaters. For a league which commenced as a professional body in 1990 to still be in diapers, says a lot about how the game has been systematically killed with most of the participants – the players and coaches left in abject poverty. Unfortunately, the supply chain, which is the domestic league has been lying prostrate, no thanks to the maladministration by a few all-knowing people who won’t quit, even with the broken piece roofs piercing through their heads.
Not having the league on television amounts to winking in the dark. Our players who want to play in Europe need tapes of games where they excelled to showcase their talents. Agents can easily present these clips to clubs seeking the services of young players. Watching the league on television would encourage Nigerians to go to match venues to see their favourite teams and get autographs of their favourite players. This would also increase gate earnings which automatically improves earnings to make the clubs more solvent.