Obuasi Goldfields Sporting Club yesterday lived their worst nightmare when the Appeals Committee of the Ghana Football Association maintained its decision to punish them with points deductions for fielding an unqualified player.
The committee, sitting as a review panel on its earlier decision which reduced Goldfields’ points build up by 12 and scuttled the club’s splendid performance for the season, maintained after a near three-and-a-half-hour sitting that its earlier decision to punish the club was properly grounded and dismissed the review application by the Obuasi club.
That certainly must look like a dead end case for Goldfields, who seemed to be getting a rare favourable decision yesterday moments before the review panel announced its decision.
Accra Hearts of Oak, who had also filed a similar case on the lines of the Great Olympics and Real Tamale United cases which resulted in the points deductions, withdrew the protest, arguing that Goldfields seemed to have a stronger case in its review application, particularly after the club held a press conference to throw more light on the circumstances surrounding the registration of Valentine Atem, the player at the centre of the storm.
But that hope gave way to despair as the I.R. Aboagye-chaired Committee upheld its earlier decision and confirmed Goldfields’ Chief Executive, Captain Andy Sam’s fears that no good would come to the club from a review application.
Sam had earlier preferred a legal action in the courts to applying for a review because he did not expect the same panel to change its mind from its own decision and had only resorted to the Committee again in order to exhaust all avenues for redress.
On the phone after the decision yesterday, Goldfields management member and Accra Representative, Owoahene Acheampong said the club would be meeting today over the issue to decide what action to take yet.
The Disciplinary Committee also dismissed a stay of execution filed by Brong Ahafo United against a three match home ban imposed for crowd violence. The clubs was also asked to pay costs of ?3,000,000.
