The week´s biggest sports news was nothing sporty. It was a gang-fight inside a football ground between two well-known top flight clubs.
The ugly incident happened in Pokhara during the National Football League on Monday. The intensity of the unruly behavior of the players of Manang Marsyandi Club (MMC) and New Road Team (NRT) was such as referee Sachin Amatya had to expel five players from the match.
The players – NRT Captain Laxman Ruchal, Asim Jung Karki, Raghu Prajapati, Bijay Gurung and Sujal Shrestha – were later banned for three more matches and another player Nirajan Khadka was warned.
Contrary to many other ugly incidents, this incident was recorded by an amateur videographer, and is accessible on YouTube, thanks to GoalNepal. The existence of video meant that anyone can scrutinize the event.
The ugly episode had many disturbing factors that need to be rectified as soon as possible to ensure sportsmanship and spirit of football. As the incident and post-incident reactions unfolded, there is enough ground to criticize the players, coaches, captains, club officials, match officials, local organizers and All Nepal Football Association (ANFA).
The players, some of whom play for the national team, were engaged in the brawl that was not desired. Undoubtedly, the players involved are the chief villains of the incident. Acceptable strategy for wasting time (and counter strategy) was not controlled in time by the referee. A timely intervention by Amatya, and possibly a couple of yellow cards, would have put the game back on track.
What were captains, coaches and club officials doing? Are their roles limited to when the ball is alive? Certainly not, it´s up to the club, coach and captain to keep the players in discipline. Thereby, the ANFA Disciplinary Committee´s decision to take action only against players involved, but not the clubs, coaches and captains, is flawed. The club should be subject to punishment for their players´ (and even fans´) unruly activities as practiced elsewhere in the world.
The ANFA decision to ban all players for three matches is also flawed because the degree of indiscipline during the incident was not equal for all three. Karki ran into the scene and deliberately kicked a player. Is his action similar to misbehavior committed by others who were engaged in push-and-pull? Since there is video evidence, it should have been analyzed well and the punishment should have been different as per the degree of breach of discipline. Last week, I wrote that before taking any action against players or clubs, they should be given an opportunity to clarify their position, which the ANFA did not follow in this case either.
Another disturbing aspect of the incident was entry of policemen into the ground. Where in the world do you see that? This is unacceptable in sports and it should not happen again.
Football is a game that thousands of Nepalis passionately follow and despite all the attempts (and claims) of ANFA to bring professionalism, it´s still amateur sports. Thus, it´s important that sportsmanship remains the top attraction of football. Only strict implementation of rules and rectification of mistakes can make it glorious.
