Kotoko-Arsenals pay the price; but who takes the blame

The Disciplinary and Grievances Committee of the Ghana Football Association (GFA) on Tuesday ruled that the abortive sixth week Glo Premier League match between Kumasi Asante Kotoko and Berekum Arsenals should be rescheduled.
The Committee therefore directed the Professional League Board to fix a tentative date for the rescheduled match. As usual parties involved in the case and their supporters have expressed divergent views on the ruling.
As expected, Berekum Arsenals finds the ruling rather bizarre and a miscarriage of justice. The Berekum team, according to its president, Alhaji Yakubu Moro, will therefore appeal against the ruling at the Appeal’s Committee of the GFA. Arsenals, Alhaji Yakubu noted, will seek a review of the Appeal Committee’s ruling if that also goes against them.
The Berekum lads believe the Disciplinary Committee failed to interpret judiciously, law 17 of the Football Association that deals with clash of jerseys and the forfeiture of points and hold the view that the action of Kumasi Asante Kotoko on the day of the match contravenes the GFA rules bordering on clause 17 and therefore the Kumasi team should have been punished accordingly. .
Kumasi Asante Kotoko on the hand felt it did no wrong because their jerseys on the day was the one approved for their away matches by the Football Association and therefore could not be sanctioned under the circumstance.
The club put forward evidence of their claim by providing pictorial evidence of how they had wore the same strip of away jerseys in other matches they had played in the ongoing premiership and where they defaulted in one instance, it was because the FA had ordered them to use their home strips in their match against Dansoman based Liberty Professionals because the home strip of Liberty would have clashed with the away strips of Asante Kotoko.
Although the Disciplinary Committee ruling is still being discussed with all manner of spins, depending on one’s interest or disposition, the paper would not veer much into that; but would rather want to delve into how the Disciplinary Committee was silent on a possible punishment that should have been meted out to the party that erred under the circumstance.
Indeed there were three parties in the melodrama-home team, Berekum Arsenals; away team Kumasi Asante Kotoko with the referee and the match commissioner serving a similar purpose on the match day. If the two teams could not be held culpable, then it stands to reason that the officials either did not interpret the laws properly or by stretch of a remote cause took the decision not to officiate the said match based on their own idiosyncrasies.
As it stands now, the teams and their teeming supporters might have paid dearly for the no-match show at Berekum. As an away team, Kumasi Asante Kotoko might have incurred the greatest of costs. Team Kotoko traveled to Berekum at a cost. That aside the two teams also recorded similar costs.
They camped their players at a cost; they fed their players at a cost and indeed their supporters also suffered a great cost. In the case of Asante Kotoko supporters, snippets of information suggest that most of their supporters traveled from various parts of the Ashanti Region, the home base of the club’s supporters to watch the abortive match.
Since the two teams were not held culpable, it means none could also be fined to pay some amount to at least defray the cost of one of the affecting teams. And Today believes if there had been some form of punishment for one of the three parties, we believe that should have been the officiating parties, to assuage the pain of the affected parties.
It is not too late and we hope the Disciplinary Committee should take a second-look at its ruling and punish accordingly the erred party to at least mitigate the pain of some of the supporters who might have defied their pressing social and economic conditions to watch the beautiful game of football only to suffer a certain indignation because one of the parties did not do its works well.
So we ask the GFA Disciplinary Committee that for now, the two teams might have paid a big price but who takes the blame?