Chairmen and general managers of clubs in the Nigeria
Professional Football League (NPFL) rated the half season as successful with a
call on the League Management Company (LMC) to improve on some lapses that were
observed in the course of the first 190 matches at the end of a mid-season review
session in Abuja, Monday.
On their side, the clubs pledged to be proactive in dealing with
fans who are involved in violent acts at the stadium by apprehending the fans
and handing them over to law enforcement agents for prosecution. The mid-season
review session was convened by the LMC at its office in Abuja ahead the start
of the second stanza of the 2016/17 season on Sunday, May 21.
Presided over by the LMC Chairman, Shehu Dikko, the session amongst other issues discussed also tasked
the LMC to properly review the fixtures for the remaining half of the season to
reduce fixture congestion which the clubs said affected not just their finances
but also the physical conditioning of their playing squad.
Dikko in his remarks harped on the need to curb the growing fans’
restiveness at match venues and challenged the Club Administrators to lead the
campaign for peaceful atmosphere at match venues. He recalled that the LMC had
made it mandatory for the host club chairman and the visiting counterpart sit
together in the box.
He said “When we mandated the club
leaderships to sit together at matches, the reasoning was that when both
leaders are seen in such friendly stance, tension will be reduced amongst their
supporters. These fans read your body language and when a club chairman reacts
negatively to a Referees’ decision, the wrong signal has been sent to the
supporters hence I urge you to eschew display of emotions while watching
matches. It is your responsibility to lead this campaign for friendly
atmosphere at matches. By our assessment, the Referees performed well so far.
We know it can always get better and we would strengthen our work with the NFF
Referees’ Committee and the NRA to improve on what was obtained but we also
want the clubs to realize that decisions cannot always go their way. The
Referees are human and liable to make mistakes but whenever we have reviewed a
match and discovered incompetence, such Referees were punished no matter how
long it took us to review the game.”
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