The level of officiating in especially the lower tiers of SA football, has left coaches fuming – labelling performances as “blatant robbery”.
It is especially clubs competing in Safa Western Cape’s ABC Motsepe League, as well as the Hollywoodbets Third Division leagues, who feel that match officials are derailing their objectives and aspirations – and in most cases determine the outcome of games.
Needless to say, it has also become a norm nowadays for coaches and administrators – who feel they have nothing to lose – to vent their frustration on social media as they feel that their pleas to the football authorities fall on deaf ears.
This comes after one of the coaches at FN Rangers Kyle Januarie highlighted their plight on social media recently following their 2-2 draw against City Kings last week.
Worst of all is that Rangers have footage that clearly shows that the goal should have been ruled out for offside but the officials were clearly on a mission of their own.
This left Januarie with no option but to name and shame these officials whom he felt were very one-eyed. and guilty of daylight robbery. He posted the photo of the match officials (pictured above) followed by comments such as: “Cheats! No other way of describing them.”
This prompted Vasco da Gama’s head coach Andrew Pequeno to add his two cents as he too has been on the short end of the stick. “They did the same to us vs Zizwe in December and last Sunday vs Palace,” Pequeno wrote on Facebook.
This scourge in other provinces such as Mpumalanga has become so untenable, that one club Tiger Boys, coached by former Santos goalkeeper Tsepho Motsoeneng pulled out of the league as they cannot continue with the poor and inconsistent refereeing.
The sad reality is that there is very little accountability or remedial action taken against these officials and everything carries on as if nothing happened leaving clubs with very little to do but to vent their anger on social media.
