By Keke Roy

It was always a nightmare interacting with the Ragos-led team for official club duties. First, thinking of climbing up the stairs up to the 9th floor at Nyayo House when the lifts couldn’t function, only to get the office closed at 10Am. Change, they say, is a therapy that hails time and memories. I remember one day going for the fixtures at the office and the clerk said the secretary (read Ragos) was not around. He had apparently gone to run personal errands in town and had not finished his duties, so the club officials had to wait for close to an hour for him to come back.

Fixture Delays

The outgoing FKF Nairobi branch officials were just lazy bodies waiting for the 4 pm tea to be served (if it existed) for them to vacate the office. Fixtures were always released on Wednesdays or Thursdays and teams did not know their opponents until then. There were at times when teams could be tied to play the same opponents that they faced the previous week. As if that is not enough, club officials were required to make photocopies of one fixture to be shared amongst the Regional and County league teams. Woe unto you if you happened to arrive late and a naughty individual had literally “forgotten” to leave the original copy at the office; it would mean that you had to plead with the clerk for another copy to be printed. The delays affected the preparation of the teams because it is not tactical to train without the knowledge of the next opponent who would face. At times, the fixtures would even be SMS’ed on Friday nights at 8pm when the players had gone home thinking that it was a free weekend for them. There were also instances when fixtures could be texted on Friday evening when your phone is off and your team is to play an away match on Saturday at 11 am… You can imagine the pressure and rush to inform the players of the same.

Faulty Standings

The league standings were also released on Wednesdays or Thursdays together with the fixtures. However, the standings were always full of errors here and there. For instance, one would find that the point tally did not match the actual points accumulated with errors of subtraction. Some teams would play 5 matches less than others because they had requested to be excused due to one or two reasons. The subsequent outcome is that the league would drag up to the last minute for the teams to share spoils even without taking to the pitch. The walkovers were normal scenarios and were given due to “lateness” regardless of the time the fixtures were released on Friday. The match officials would write cooked match reports if the away team was not in their good books. Some teams benefited from boardroom points because they had played on unmarked grounds or the ball boys did not bring balls on time!

Referees and Venues

This is one area that the new office should work on, especially for teams that share grounds or lack alternative playing areas. Some grounds are in bad conditions that should not be used for county or regional league matches. An instance is Makongeni grounds during the rainy seasons. The referees were always the late comers because they had been assigned several clashing matches at the same time. As a result, they will come and start harassing teams to get into the pitch, only for them to play 25 minutes apiece each half. To add salt to the already wounded injury, the majority of the referees were assigned duties on teams that come from their “areas of jurisdictions.” This means that they would favor the home teams by ignoring calls meant for the away teams. Remember, the home teams paid the referees and this was an official duty. The referees were also unqualified and did petty errors. Some would come without the assistants and relied on the stewards for corner, throw-ins or substitution calls.

Recommendations

The new office bearers should know that the task ahead is tricky and require dedicated members to avert the above challenges. I would wish to see the full fixtures released on time instead of releasing the weekly versions of the old office. It will also be prudent to train the referees and assign them duties on far away matches instead of nearby home grounds. It will also be good for the office bearers to conduct training clinics for the match officials to keep them abreast with the current rules in order to avoid petty mistakes. The other recommendation would be to update the standings on a timely basis, maybe every Wednesday, to avoid laxity on the teams. The next important recommendation would be to ensure that the leagues are played on home and away basis instead of the one-leg league that was introduced the previous season.

I wish the new office bearers good luck.

The writer is just a local football enthusiast who claims to know something, but knows nothing. He is here to share and learn something.

Twitter: @IAmKekeRoy

Collins Okinyo

Ex- CAF Media Expert. An expert on African football with over 15 years experience ,always with an ear to the ground with indepth knowledge of the game. I have worked for top publications including 7 years at www.supersport.com until i founded www.soka25east.com to quench the thirst of football lovers across the continent. I have trained young upcoming journalists who are now a voice in African football.I have covered World Cup,AFCON,CHAN,Champions League,Confederations Cup,Cecafa,Cosafa,Wafu and many other football tournaments across the World. Founder Football Africa Arena(FAA),Founder www.afrisportdigital.com