AFCON TICKETS SABOTAGE!

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By Thomas Kwenaite THE Africa Cup of Nations ticketing saga took on an ugly and serious turn when the Executive Mayor of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan called the SA Police Services to investigate either a deliberate attempt to sabotage the event or possible corruption regarding the sale of event tickets.

Tickets for the opening double-header programme in Group B featuring Ghana/DR Congo as well as Mali/Niger were reportedly sold out three days before

Shocking decision by CAF PAGE 5

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THE 2013 Africa Cup of Nations is well and truly in full swing and has turned out to be a great spectacle. The colorfully attired fans blowing their vuvuzelas or beating drums; the crazy celebrations (notably DRC goalkeeper Robert Kidiaba) and the entertainment value on the field have really made this show-piece one to remember.

The KZN crowd has been warm and marvelous. They magnificent-ly rallied behind Bafana Bafana at the Moses Mabhida Stadium and lifted them up from the pall of gloom that descended following that dreary stalemate on opening day against Cape Verde at the National Stadium. That boisterous support enabled Bafana to fly into the quarterfinals.

Moments before kick-off there were even suggestions from some members of the fourthestate that the game should have perhaps been played much later to allow the crowd enough time to wing their way to the stadium as they were returning from work.

This brings us to the subject of this editorial.

We need to soberly ponder a few points that have been stick-ing like a sore thumb. It is not our intention to punch holes or finding fault with the hosts and the organiz-ers. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, the Bafana Bafana match against Morocco was played in the middle of the week and most people would have been returning from work.

It was on a day when there was no double-header and moving the kickoff to 8pm would not have harmed anyone and might have

ensured a full house by the time the game started. That would have meant an even greater atmosphere for the television audience.

Part of the 2010 legacy was cer-tainly the establishment of fantastic facilities across the country. No doubt the domestic game and now the AFCON is benefiting from this. But somehow not only have we taken the eyes off the ball but have completely dropped the ball since those heady days during 2010.

How on earth we allowed the Mbombela Stadium playing pitch to deteriorate into the state it is pres-ently is beyond shocking. There is

simply no excuse except to say the Stadium management at Mbombe-la is not only guilty of dereliction of duty, but have embarrassed the entire country judging by the state of that pitch.

South Africa has earned a rep-utation as country with first class facilities and world class when it comes to staging world events. But the state of the Mbombela pitch is an eyesore. It hardly makes for a good passing game and the bounce of the ball allied to the sand dunes flying about when players try to kick theball make us cringe with embarrassment.

We wonder if the budget did not allow them to employ an experi-enced grounds man or they did not make contingency plans if the grounds man went on strike a few-days before the kickoff. Whatever the reason, we got the impression that perhaps they inadvertently hired out the ground to the Spanish community who staged a bull run at the venue.

The lack of proper translators at venues across the country is another sore point.

We have received numerous complaints of translators who specialized in giving the media an “abridged” version of what the coaches are saying. In fact, some coaches like Claude Le Roy, Patrick Carteron, and Gernot Rohr who are multilingual, have rebuked the translators for mis-quoting them and ended up conducting the press conference in both French and English.

What we have found to be strange is that during the FIFA World Cup and at the same venues, we had coaches that spoke French, Portuguese, Dutch, German, Russian, Mandarin, Jap-anese, Korean, Spanish, Chinese, yet there were enough translators we hardly noticed that we spoke different languages, as there were proper translators.

Why did organizers not keep the data of all those translators? Or were they cutting on costs by pick-ing up on the streets people who claimed to understand both French and English, but had no experience of conference translation? The AFCON organizers could do much better than this.

Then of course there is the shambles around ticket sales. We have always complained about local white and Indian supporters who only attend matches when Manchester United or England comes calling. Yet we missed a great opportunity to entice them back into the game.

There are countless stories of the frustrations people went through in trying to purchase tickets for themselves and their employ-ees, but were turned away at ticket outlets allegedly because tickets have been sold out, yet on match day there were such empty rows of seats that they were an eyesore.

With all the great international stars on show in this tournament, there could have never been an easier way to get the fans to the stadiums. We have an in-depth story around the ticket sales saga among the pages of our publica-tion, which will explain why we had so many empty seats despite proclamations that tickets had been sold out.

Meanwhile, we noted with sadness the high number of South African athletes who were sanc-tioned for doping offenses last year. Eleven was the total number and as noted by Athletics SA, this is a “very high number for a single country and indicates that there is a serious problem with both a lack of awareness of the dangers of using such substances and also an ele-ment of dishonesty in some cases. What makes the numbers worse is that there are still six outstanding-cases awaiting finalization.”

We hope that ASA will act swiftly to eradicate the problem.

EDITORIAL

We have taken our eyes off the ball

Chief Editor Thomas Kwenaite

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