GFA Reacts To Ebou Faye's Comments

Following the comments made by the Secretary-General of Banjul Sports Committee regarding the early release of the 2009\10 GFA First Division fixtures, the Secretary-General of the Gambia Football Association, Jammeh E.K Bojang has reacted to the article written by Ebou Faye, captioned GFA: Another Technical Misjudgement, in a letter sent to the Point Newspaper which has questioned the GFA's decision to release the fixtures for the first division league without even the annual club management meeting, in which the FA meet with clubs to postmortem the 2008\09 season and map out the direction of the 2009\10 season.

Below we produce the full text of the letter:

"Firstly, we are tempted to question the rationale behind the publication of the article "GFA Another Technical Misjudgement" since reading between the lines, a football technician would see the barrenness in the whole exposition.

Over the years, the release added, some of our so-called 'technicians' decried the late commencement of the National Leagues and further suggested that the National Leagues should kick-off in November\ December to enable our teams' to be active before their engagement in the CAF champions' league and the confederation cup that kick-off in January of each year. Has this proposal been forgotten? Not with us anyway it continued.

We are fully aware of the proposals forwarded to us by the Gambia Football Coaches Association (GFCA), in which it was also asserted that GFA should organise more competition to engender high fitness levels for our players.

In the absence of sponsors, we sincerely opted to increase the number of league matches per term weekly to two to generate competitiveness. In fact this concept was equally propagated by some 'technicians' but once implemented, most of them back tracked on it and claimed that it was too much demanding on our young players."

It could be recalled that on some of the media "talk shows", some pundits" criticised the GFA for not having a calendar of activities. Isn't it funny to hear such consternation coming from people who claim to be above board, whilst they can't even manage a club to success? On a mordant note, what is the GFA? It is an association of clubs\ stakeholders and not as perceived by the critics to mean a few people in its management.

By drawing up fixtures for an early start to the league season, we are adhering to the recommendations put forward to management.

But if is the responsibility of the clubs\ teams(all respects to them) to arrange their own pre-season training programmes for the past several months.

We believe it is appropriate enough to present the league fixtures to the pre-season management meeting on  December 5th 2009 since it is the responsibility of the Executive Committee to ratify and adopt all documents and proposals regarding football in any national association.

The release went further to add that "we are aware that some "pundits" are out to create acrimony between management and the league clubs by dilating on issues that they do not understand so as to sow seeds of discord. As it stands it went on to say, the relations between the Executive Committee and affiliates of the GFA are very cordial and no one will be encouraged to pigue this partnership.

Finally, we want to assure all and sundry that we are open to positive propositions and constructive criticisms but any unnecessary rebuttal on our game and national association will be dispelled appropriately."

This letter was signed by the Secretary General of the Gambia Football Association Jammeh E.K Bojang.