Ghana Hockey Federation warned to fix pitch

The Ghana Hockey Federation (GHF) has spoken on the deteriorating state of the Ghana national hockey pitch. The state-of-the-art Hockey stadium which was constructed is gradually losing its value and beginning to take the shape of a white elephant.

The 1,200-seating capacity stadium which was built to host the 11-day Africa Cup Hockey Tournament since it refurbishment in 2009 has seen no renovation at all. In recent times in statement the Ghana hockey association president acknowledged the fact that they (hockey federation) needed to pay some huge amount to some companies and individuals.

But the current state of the art water based pitch constructed and installed with the synthetic turf product, Edel Triple T EL System by a Belgium-based grass experts, is battling with maintaining the playing surface even to meet the demands of the local teams in the ongoing Ghana hockey league.

According to sportscrusader.com investigations, an agreement between Edel grass and the government of Ghana has not been fulfilled and for that reason the pitch is suffering.

In the agreement, Edel grass (Edel Triple T EL system) will help maintain the pitch for the next five years after construction and the government of Ghana will offer the Belgian based company, free-bait (waiver) on their operations in the country; but the government has failed to honour its part of the agreement.

Speaking on the current state of the pitch, Richard Akpokavie, president of Ghana hockey association said, “With the assistance of the FIH (International Hockey Federation) we’ve the experts who arrived in December to take a look at the pitch and see how we can get it back to a license global facility.”

“The Experts are done with their work and have presented the estimate and we are looking at $120,000 to help get the pitch back to the international level else we can’t host any international competition and as long as we delay we might not be able to even play on the pitch,” he added.

Ghana is hoping to host the FIH world league in September and any further delay on fixing the deteriorating state of the pitch will spell doom for Ghana.