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I want to go back to an article that I wrote last year in this very blog after the Gor Mahia versus Ulinzi match. Gor Mahia fans went on the rampage and destroyed property at Nyayo Stadium ostensibly because they were unhappy after a goal scored by Gor was disallowed.
At that time I questioned why the football authorities were so lenient on Gor Mahia. Even after the incident, the football authorities did not take any serious action against the club or its fans.
I believe that this must have emboldened the fans who last weekend were at it again when they played against AFC Leopards. This time, their fans were dissatisfied when one of their players was shown a red card for a bad tackle against an opponent.
The game was stopped for 26 minutes. Police had to intervene and throw tear gas to disperse the rowdy Gor Mahia fans. This was a very unfortunate event. Some people have claimed that a young man who was caught in the skirmishes was killed in or around the stadium.
As a result of this incident, AFC Leopards has threatened not to honour its match against Gor on April 1st in the Top Eight tournament. The Football Kenya Federation has now ordered that the match be played in Mombasa.
It was reported that the Gor Mahia Secretary General, while regretting the incident, blamed the referee of the day, Davies Omweno for the incident. He claimed that the red card shown to the Gor player was unfair.
As this was happening, world football governing body FIFA was threatening that Kenya will be docked points in their 2014 World Cup qualifiers.
All these events do not augur well for football in the country.
Firstly, Gor Mahia should take responsibility for the actions of its ‘fans’. It was not in order for the Gor Mahia SG to blame the referee. It is such posturing that gives fans the audacity to take the law into their own hands. The fans forget that they cannot be judges in their own case. Even if the referee is on the wrong (which sometimes happens), the fans have no right to intervene as they wish.
Gor Mahia officials need to educate their fans to know that there are established channels for a club to air its grievances if it is dissatisfied with the performance of a referee. Hooliganism is not one of them. In this era of professionalizing the game, no private investor(s) would want to be associated with a club with such a bad reputation as the one the Gor fans are giving the club.
I think Gor Mahia is taking advantage of the fact that the football authorities know that the club’s Green Army has played a big role in bringing fans to back to the stadiums. But the FKF should find a way of dealing with the problem in way that does not harm football and nor injure Gor, as a club.
Secondly, FKF should be tough with Gor Mahia by asking the club to identify the hooligans. It is upon Gor Mahia to make sure that they have enough stewards in every of their matches who would be able to single out the hooligans when trouble occurs.
I am sure that the club and the fans know some of these hooligans. They could be the club’s most ardent supporters but their actions are detrimental to the well-being of the club. The actions of the hooligans are jeopardising the livelihoods of the players, who find employment in football.
Do these fans really care about the welfare of the players? I highly doubt.
Thirdly, the FKF should find a way of not only assuring the safety of fans, but also their comfort. FIFA’s warning to Kenya came because of improper conduct of fans who moved to the main stand (from the outer stands) to shelter when it started raining in the match against Seychelles last year November.
This is simply because it is only the main stand that has shelter to cover fans in case the rains come falling. Blaming the fans will not do. All fans, as long as they have paid their way into the stadium need comfort. Thus, FKF and Stadia Management Board, which runs stadiums, should work together to see to it that they shelter all stands. Otherwise, should this not happen, when the rains come again, fans will still move from the outer stands to the main stand!
These are only a few of the measures that can be taken to restore football to its former glory. Condemning Gor Mahia wholesale because of the behavior of a few fans will also not solve the problem of hooliganism.
If the football authorities had listened to my cry and that of many other football lovers last year, maybe this would not have happened.
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