Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Division 1 resumes in three days but...

It is not for fun that Ghana's Division One league - the second tier in the football hierarchy - has been christened 'the Wilderness'.

If your team is relegated from the Premier League to the Wilderness, you can be certain of all kinds of hell. Among them is the fact that league postponements are rife. These mostly come about due to protests lodged by teams (mostly for unqualified player accusations).

After one such break, the Division One League Board had penned 6 June as resumption day. However...

Aduana Stars - one of the Division's teams - had lodged a protest to the GFA that in their game with Brong Ahafo United, the latter team had fielded an unqualified player. According to Aduana Stars, the player fielded as Douglas Yeboah was an impostor and so B.A. United benefitted from the use of a wrong player.

Hence, after investigation, the GFA has deducted 18 points from B.A. United, leaving them with -5 points (don't laugh!) Now, B.A. United is saying that it will appeal the decision. The CEO of the team, Micky Charles said:

"We were fined 1500 cedis as well but we know that we have proof.

And it is this proof that will exonerate us. More importantly there is precedent.

If you recall All Blacks had been similarly docked points but upon appeal they were given back what was theirs. So we are not scared at all."


As a result, if this case is not settled early, the June 6 date set for resumption may be made nonsense of.

Note: The interview with Micky Charles was conducted in Twi on Asempa FM in Accra, so the translations you'll see elsewhere may vary a bit.
____