Giving long term match bans to referees in GPL is gradually becoming the order of the day since the setting of the Match Review Panel. We thought their work will be to review the match played. Little did we know the panel will only be interested in incidents in the game rather than entire match.
Decisions from this Match Review Panel which find official guilty of singular incidents brings out long term bans without blink.
If the intention of GPL organisers for banning referees is to improve officiating in Ghana then they are getting it all wrong. Constant education, equipping and practice is the way we use to improve officiating.
Elsewhere referees are giving communication gadgets to aid their decision making but that is not the case in Ghana. It is very common in GPL to have referees officiating who can’t even communicate among themselves because there is no gadgets but we expect referees in GPL to give out performances at the EPL level. In fact your input determines your output.
Depriving referees matches through these constant banning will only make referees rusty and might impair their judgements which is supposed to be rather sharpened as time goes by.
GPL can choose to ban referees long term because they have done no significant investments in referees in Ghana because no institution in this world will constantly give long term bans to its staff if they had made huge investments in them.
The performance of the referees on a day should be assessed wholistically and not with single mistakes. Constant investments such as refresher courses and modern refereeing equipment should be provided.
Referee assessors at every match venue should have discussions with referees on the day just after every game to point out areas that need improvements. This will go a long way to make their referees perormance better and better.
But unfortunately, we don’t do enough for referees in GPL so the organisers of GPL tend to think our referees are valueless hence easily disposable.
Owuraku Nsiah CA
Sikka FM
