The ongoing shenanigans in our country’s flagship football league, is worth tackling obviously with the ultimate view to remind unscrupulous club officials about the incentive super response tendency.
People normally respond to incentives by doing what is in their best interests and what noteworthy is, first, how quickly and radically people’s behaviour changes when incentives come into play or are altered and secondly, the fact that people easily respond to the incentives themselves and not the grander intentions behind them.
News filtering from the far north-east town of Rundu is that footballers from United Stars football club are gatvol with the fashion in which they are treated.
Word from that neck of the woods is that the players have now downed tools and are on strike because club bosses have made it their sole beat to deduct money from their monthly salaries as a result of their luke warm performance on the field of play where the club has been finding results extremely hard to come by.
The affected players will have none of that and maintains there is no such clause in their contracts to dock moolah from their hard earned meager salaries should the club fail to manufacture decent results.
HELLO! good incentive systems comprise both intent and reward. Let us say if authorities censor a newspaper that regularly puts politicians to the sword, it could make that publication’s content more famous.
United Stars must learn to treat its players like true professionals and not like factory workers. What boggles the mind is the Namibia Premier League (NPL) convenient silence on these issues that have the potential to bring the game of football into disrepute.
One would have expected the league to pronounce itself since it has a moral obligation to protect its subjects. Football is not about the clubs and administrators – it’s about the players, the real McCoy’s of the beautiful game. Period!.
It should be noted that supporters don’t simply squeeze their bodies through the turnstiles to part ways with their hard earned cash to watch club officials in their blue suits, the prime target is the entertainers, the athletes.
Silence can be easily understood that the league authorities endorses the clubs’ draconian antics to dock money from the players if and when it deems fit. Local footballers have been long been taken for a ride by football administrators and this sickening practice should no longer be tolerated. Finish and klaar.
How much effort does it take to question our own theories? The decision by the NPL to schedule this weekend’s pick of the MTC Premiership high profile match between traditional Katutura rivals Black Africa and Orlando Pirates late on Sunday afternoon amounts to poor planning and lack of insight, to say the least.
Not only does this match attract vast interest among the football crazy inhabitants of our beloved land of the brave with fans traveling from all corners of the country to come and witness this august event on our annual sports calendar – BA/Pirates is a matter of life and death.
Such short sightedness could potentially put the traveling fans lives in danger, as they have to travel long distances back to their respective towns when darkness has already set in. I rest my case.