So, the chickens finally came home to roost in the aftermath of African Stars expulsion from all football related activities by Namibia’s flagship league (NPL).
The fundamental question that needs to be addressed with the outmost urgency it so dearly deserves is; who has brought the game of football into disrepute? I’m just asking.
Clearly, one thing is allowed to happen then this will inevitably trigger a chain of subsequent undesirable events, just as you knock over one domino, then the proverbial domino effect comes into play.
The verdict in the long drawn out saga between the country’s football flagship league, the Namibia Premier League (NPL) and its affiliate African Stars Football Club, calls into question the level of competence among our football administrators and perhaps a need for a serious skills audit within the annals of the NPL.
African Stars were expelled for having brought the game of football into disrepute after the club sought refuge with the magistrate courts for what they felt, and rightly so, was unfair dismissal in the absence of charges and properly constituted disciplinary hearing before a guilty verdict was delivered without given a fair platform to state their case.
For starters, the fundamentals were totally messed up from the very beginning when the NPL Management Committee (MC) resolved to have the abandoned match replayed over the remaining eight minutes without substantiating its resolution.
Yours truly is a firm believer in the notion that football matches should not be won on the green table in boardrooms but on the football pitch with the team scoring the most number of goals to be declared the winner, period!. But alas, the game of football is played according to a certain set of rules that must be preserved at all time.
The decision to have the match replayed over the remaining 8-minutes is in tandem with the rule that the match can only be replayed over the remaining minutes if the cause of the abandonment was manmade. Up to this day, the MC is yet to advance an explanation as to how it applied its mind to arrive at that resolution.
Dear readers, this is not an attack on the NPL hierarchy but it should be understood that this whole saga has left our football administrators with egg on the face and the game of football is now the ultimate loser and has become a laughing stock.
It should also be noted that Stars were totally in the wrong by taking its grievances to the magistrate courts without having exhausted all available avenues, such as the NFA, the Presiding Sports authorities, which is the NSC in this case and subsequently the portfolio Ministry. The courts should only serve as a last resort.
Another bone of contention is that Stars still has an outstanding court case against both the NFA and NPL, which to my understanding leaves the appellants not in good standing with the country’s football authorities – bringing one to conclude that the NFA erred to facilitate the Appeal process on the basis of the outstanding dispute to still to be dealt with by the court.
It will also be quite interesting to see whether NFA will still go ahead with disciplinary proceedings against Stars for having brought the game of football into disrepute, as charged earlier. All these shenanigans could have been easily avoided if the NPL just listened and sought advise from those in the know to steer clear of these self inflicted embarrassment.
It appears the country’s flagship league is administered without proper rules in place to guide its functions and in all honesty, domestic football needs new blood of people who are capable of impregnating new ideas while putting preventable measures in place rather than the usual reactionary ones.
Strangely, Stars blames everyone else beside themselves, notwithstanding the grave error it committed that led to its appeal being thrown out on a technicality after it cited NFA as first respondents in its initial appeal instead of NPL. I rest my case.