Ghana Football Association (GFA) has taken a stance to curb hooliganism in our game.
This was made known through the communications director of the association Henry Asante Twum
The position of the football governing body follows a weekend of pure violence in our game of football across all levels; a case study being the incident at the Sunyani Coronation park when BA united hosted Real Tamale United.
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Speaking on Happy 98.9FM’s Sports with Ohene Bampoe-Brenya, Asante Twum revealed that the FA has taken steps to ban any venue without an external wall from hosting any official game in the country starting from next season.
“If you can recall, about two weeks ago appeals committee came out with a verdict that they have banned Wamanafo park for life. Even before then ExCo had taken the decision that every division one league centre without an external wall cannot host matches next season”.
“It is because they don’t have an external wall, someone can just leave the house and once the park is right in front of them they can just stand there and watch the game. If it becomes critical, he can rush home, pick a stick or cutlass straight to the park. So we have banned all venues without external walls from hosting matches next season. Irrespective of who you are, if you’re without an external wall and proper inner perimeter you can’t host matches”, he added
“If you study the report of the safety and security team that went to Sunyani, there are a lot of loopholes with the architecture of our stadia. People jump without even thinking about their safety. It is short and weak too. Even at some point, supporters had to access the tunnel to attack security men. So the structure and architectural design of our stadia are all issues we have to look at”.
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Mr. Twum reiterated, “We want to get to a point where supporters will not go to the stadium thinking that sporting assault is free of punishment but if you slap someone in the market police can arrest you. It’s becoming Canker in our system. So when the fan goes to the stadium, he’ll jump the wall and enter the inner perimeter and slap the referee and go scot-free. It happened in Wamanafo, it happened in Anyinasin, Nkoranza, Kintampo, Tamale and now Sunyani. We don’t know where tomorrow it will happen so there was the need for us to act”.
By: Emmanuel Owusu Boadi
