Tag: NPFL

It’s one of those days that Hardball is hobbled by headline. For a long moment, even hours, you just cannot put a handle on your title. Sometimes every bit of the piece may have taken their natural sequence and fallen into place but you still do not have a suitable head. Imagine having a headless body in your hands!

But what you see above (NPFL: pitch dark) happens to be a passable alternative after toying with about half a dozen others. Of course NPFL stands for Nigeria Professional Football League; meaning top football as we know it in Nigeria today. Though there are other lower rung leagues, they may be said to be inconsequential compared to the NPFL which is the equivalent of the English Professional Football League, EPL.

Now, the above title has been triggered by the recent retrogression of the Nigeria’s premier football league since the beginning of the current season. The local football managed by the League Management Company, LMC, has actually seen some modest improvement with the coming of the LMC in the last five years or so. But the modest gains are now being eroded gradually.

For instance, since the beginning of the current season (which seems interminable and winding), football matches have disappeared from television as Supersports (the South African cable network) which aired it suddenly stopped. And there is no official reason till date. Why our boastful Nigeria Television Authority, NTA (Africa’s largest network) cannot air at least some local league matches, must be a technical mystery.

But the story is that while many African countries’ premier league are viewed live across the continent, Nigeria, the giant of Africa can be said to be playing football in the dark. This explains the title above, “Pitch dark”. NPFL must be among the very few major national leagues in the entire world today not aired on television; if not live, at least recorded. It’s so, so primitive.

The straight analogy is playing football in the dark. And the dark result is that the league is fast becoming comical, if not farcical in which teams commit criminality on home turfs in the bid to win at all cost.

Here is a sad checklist: hardly any away victories; referees toy with regulation time; probably more penalties are awarded here than in any other league; abuse of the offside rule and stopping of matches abruptly to stop a goal-bound move. A general criminal abuse of discretion by obviously compromised referees.

The stench now stinks to the heavens that even LMC officials hold their noses. Some referees were axed recently. But that’s silly solution to say it nicely; let’s stop playing football in the dark. Simple!