Tension is brewing in the Bakau Nawettan after Bantangkoto FC announced yesterday that it will not respect the decision of the committee stripping them of their semifinal victory over Katchically FC on Tuesday in the league championship.
The Bakau sports committee yesterday upheld an appeal by Katchically contending that Abdoulie Saidy who played for Bantangkoto in the match was not registered and therefore not eligible for the match.
According to committee president Yusufa Samba, the committee had informed Bantangkoto about the non-eligibility of the player before the match.
Asked how come the player took part in the initial fixture between the two sides, Samba said Bantangkoto’s first attempt to register the player was turned down officially by the committee since no registration is allowed after quarter finals according to the zones’s rules which has been circulated to all teams. “However they managed to go through a committee official who made an error by unauthorisedly including him in the register. This was detected and the committee official has been suspended after which we wrote to Bantankoto to inform them that the player was not registered and should not play,” Samba said. He stressed that
Bantangkoto had been adequately informed about the non-eligibility of the player in question and they should have heeded that advise. “What is bizarre is that the player only played for just 2 minutes,” Samba lamented.
However Coach Pa Dodou Darboe of Bantangkoto blamed the committee for the mess. He also vowed that his team will not accept the committee’s decision to strip them of their points as it is unfair and a clear case of administrative error by the committee.
“The standardised rules applicable to all super nawettan zones states that extra registration is allowed after the first round which is what we did,” coach Darboe said. He denied that there is any provision in the Bakau zone’s nawettan rule which states that registrations are not allowed after quarterfinals.
‘’There is nothing like that in their rules,” the coach said. He further disclosed that the committees letter on the none eligibility of the player even came late
Meanwhile as the matter is developing to a standoff people in the town are concern that unless a definitive solution is found soonest, matters could get out of hand.
Bantangkoto meanwhile has reported the matter to the Gambia football federation as well as the Bakau police station and many concern stakeholders seeking for redress.
