Our beloved sport, football is at its begging knees again with a canker that continually plagues its overall development, HOOLIGANISM.
So just this other day, Aduana Stars locked horns with Tamale City in week twenty-five of the ongoing betPawa Premier League at the end of match proceedings, the host basked in glory with all 3 points courtesy of a late penalty in additional time expertly converted by inform, Isaac Mintah to send the home side’s fans into ruptures.
When the game ended, reports went rife that a section of the playing body, technical team, and other auxiliary staff of the traveling side had been subjected to severe beatings. The circling videos and pictures were just abhorring, to say the least in this modern age of football.
The home venue of Aduana Stars, the Nana Agyemang Badu II park, as expected by the larger populace has since been banned by the Ghana Football Association until further notice.
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We say we are playing a professional league but we still have unscrupulous fans subject opposition fans to beatings of several magnitudes, where is the fair play the game speaks about?
Every now and then when issues of this enormity rear their head, it plays a considerable adverse effect on our league, its brand is severely damaged, sponsorship deals hang in a balance, and stadium attendance begins to plummet amongst other things but continually we go back to doing the same thing that places our league decades behind.
The thriving issue is that hooliganism is deep-rooted and cannot be completely erased from our game but its recurring nature leaves much to be desired. In past times, notable venues were found culpable of these offenses, famous Wamnafo town park, Aliu Mahama Stadium, Sunyani coronation park, Akoon Park, and Ndoum sports stadium.
I am sitting here asking myself a lot of questions as to where we go from here, It’s as though we move one step forward and two steps backward.
I believe we all have a role to play to help safeguard our league but more so, the mother body has a significant role to make sure that punitive measures are taken to arrest this prevailing situation in our league.
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The GFA is always quick to issue a stadium ban directive for offending venues but this has yielded little or no results in the last few seasons, we need to be more drastic in our approach to dealing with this subject matter.
The GFA in collaboration with clubs will have to do more to ensure the safety of fans at the stadium if it means increasing security at match venues, a thorough search of fans to make sure that no one is in possession of a dangerous weapon that could injure or take someone’s life.
Also, Club officials who incite fans or are found to have partaken in these acts should face harsher punishments to curb the spate of this recurrent conundrum we are often faced with from time to time.
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The GFA, GHALCA, club and other vested parties should as a part of necessity hold workshops, outreaches, and media sanitization programs to orient fans on the adverse effects of hooliganism on the game.
The game of football has come to stay with us, a sport that has unified us on several occasions, we owe it a duty to help preserve and protect it from hooliganism.
