Training and playing on bad pitches

Hearts of Oak player training on a grassless pitch. 

Back in the days at Koforidua-Nsukwao when I was an excellent, young goalie named after the Cameroonian legend, Thomas Nkono, I trained and played at street corners and open spaces. The surfaces on which I played were dreadfully bad.

I didn’t care. I invariably disregarded the state of those playing surfaces to passionately pursue my interest, which was to play football – with my mother always on my neck and sadly having the trouble to treat the injuries I returned home with.

If I sustain bruises while playing on such surfaces, I could be described as lucky. If my injury however turns out to be knee or shoulder dislocation, I could correctly predict that, either insults or severe beatings would accompany any sort of attention I would be given at home before being sent to hospital for proper medical care.

Anytime I got the chance to train or play on pitches at Senior Secondary (now Senior High) Schools; I considered those pitches much better and safer to use because they usually had green grass that provide some cushion. And I was picked by my school team for inter-schools’ competition, playing on the turf at the Koforidua Stadium was like playing in heaven because the pitch was good. It had lush green grass compared with the pitches at our backyards.

I saw the pitch at the Koforidua Stadium as the best. Nearly 20 years on, it’s sad to note that, the pitch at the Koforidua Stadium and many others across Ghana I have seen, are indeed no better pitches. Certainly, because I hadn’t seen good football pitches elsewhere and I also had no choice except to compare the one at the stadium to the ones at my backyard, I assumed that, the stadium pitch was excellent.

Today, it’s pathetic to note that, not only was the pitch at the Koforidua Stadium awful but it has really seen no upgrade for years now and this pitch at the Koforidua Stadium isn’t alone. Having followed domestic football closely and travelled to practically every popular football venue in Ghana in the last decade, it’s no exaggeration to conclude that, most competitive, domestic league matches are played on bad pitches.

That’s a worry. Something must be done about it. Recently, I saw pictures of Hearts of Oak players training on red, dusty, hard surfaces in modern day Accra. Hearts aren’t alone.

It’s a national canker as observed by Kotoko Operations Manager, George Kennedy who in an interview published last week, couldn’t fathom why the Premier League Board (PLB) would travel to inspect pitches at all league centres and approve them but the FA Cup Committee conversely sanctions any pitch at all for use in their competition.

The FA Cup committee goes by no standards. For them anything goes. Ghana football deserves better. If kids play on improvised pitches and their parents go after them disapprovingly due to the associated risks of playing on such poor parks, why should professional footballers be allowed to play on such parks? A close examination of injuries at Kotoko in more than three seasons indicates that nearly 60 per cent are because of the poor pitches the team uses nationwide. 

I wouldn’t veer into the debate of whose duty it’s to construct good pitches for our game.

I have however said elsewhere, that, it’s a shared responsibility between the Ghana Football Association (GFA) and the government. Of course, clubs have a duty to provide quality pitches for use by their players. The private sector can only come in when the government, the GFA and the clubs make the initiative.

The private sector will often be supportive of such good courses when they find reasons to do so – not when they hear that thousands of dollars have been shared in the name of ex-gratia to GFA Executive Committee members, and certainly, not when most club administrators appear clueless concerning what to do to ensure the growth of the entities they own or administer.

Whether as a government; a football association or a club administrator; you can provide a good pitch when you set your priorities right with the scarce resources available. With right priorities, they can only come about when as a government; GFA or clubs; identifiable development plans are drawn for the construction of such facilities.