Nasarawa Amazons won the final of the NWPL Super4 in an exciting encounter against Delta Queens and lived up to the festive and carnival-like atmosphere that was promised by the Chairperson of the Nigeria Women Football League (NWFL) way back in August during the press conference to announce the draws for the competition in Lagos.

In a competition where expectations were huge especially with the recent achievements recorded in football from the female u-20 team thrashing Tanzania to the Super Eagles qualifying for the group stages of the World Cup in Russia anything less than eventful and glamorous would have been considered a failure.

Though in all sincerity the competition lived up to the expectation but nothing is wholesomely beautiful and thebusybuddiesng.com is here to give you a low down of the ugly side of the NWPL Super4 you missed.

Organisation:

Yes you guessed right we are starting with the organisers, it’s a respected gesture to want to follow international standards but the saying “Rome was not built in a day” finds big placement here. In a time where female football worldwide is still yet to gain significant recognition doing simple things the simple way won’t hurt anybody. Match day 3 almost lost the aura after organisers decided to move both matches to 4:00pm as against the (2:00pm and 4:00pm) earlier stated for each match respectively.

It’s understandable that organisers felt moving both games to the same time would show transparency but the match between Baylesa Queens and Rivers Angels couldn’t hold because the pitch chosen for the match was water logged from rains earlier meaning it had to be moved back to the Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium and played under the floodlights. Well one good thing came out of this people outside of Edo State now know that the floodlights at the stadium works but imagine if they didn’t work…..let’s leave that to your imagination.

Still on Matchday 3 and the organisers it was bad enough that the games were moved but proper communication won’t have hurt anybody. Imagine as a fan finding out on matchday that games had been shifted.

Finally with the organisers, security is a vital part of football matches. If we are going to bring back the fans to the Stadium then we should be able to assure them of their safety. Imagine entering the stadium and having no security agent at the gate to check fans for dangerous instruments and the likes. Security personnel stationed in the stadium were on the touchline with the coaching crew and it’s strange because the pitch is barricaded from the fans. Also the few security personnels stationed in the fans area were assigned to the VIPs.

Commentary of the Games:

The organisers took time to make the event a perfect success but missed the point of a commentator actually commentating on the match. Yes we understand the need to give due appreciation to the sponsors and partners who made the competition a success but a commentator should give the fans detail to detail events of the game on the pitch and not bore the fans with unnecessary sentiments. Kudos to the organisers though they corrected it as the competition wore on but it really shouldn’t have occurred in the first place.

The Media:

We saved the best for last and this is written with all humility as we respect all our senior colleagues who took time out of their busy schedule to cover this competition because truthfully what’s a football competition without the media to showcase its beauty. Enough with the pleasantries (by the way it took a lot to do that) and no name or media outlet would be mentioned as we don’t want to give unpaid attention to anyone.

So at the press conference to kick-off the competition, a journalist asked what the plan was for journalists and the chairperson made it sound like a sort of partnership to promote the women league. So you can imagine the surprise when the post-match conference after each game was attended by a few media outlet and if you thought that was a surprise imagine the bigger surprise when the final of the tournament was flooded by media personnel….good you say (we thought so too till the bigger shocker).

So our nosy correspondent while looking to grant and gather interviews came across a gathering of people and was curious to know what was happening as there were no questions been asked or answers been given instead it was a group of men hauling out names of media outfits. When our correspondent finally got a hold of someone the information was to write the name of your media outfit. So on went our correspondent and as soon as our media outfit was named, a fit of laughter erupted and one of the journalist said “which one be that one” then comes out the identification card and another journalist said “why are you trying to cash on our money”.

And our correspondent was still trying to make sense of it another journalist comes and says “write my name I can’t be sharing money with my cameraman it won’t be like the last time and reeled out his name which was written down” and to crown it all up another journalist comes and says “you are a journalist bah, who do you report to (to this she answered by mentioning her bosses) and the man says only SWAN is recognised here”.  While all these was on-going some other journalist were hauling insults at each other as to why their media wasn’t recognised, why some people would get more than them etc.

To say this was ugly is an understatement, if we are going to grow sports in this country and make it acknowledged at the international level the media has a big part to play hey but what do we know…..I leave you to be the judge of that.