The President of the Ghana Football Association (GFA), Kurt E.S Okraku, has engaged members of the newly constituted Match Review Panel on the scope of their work via Zoom.

The essence of the meeting was for members to fraternise for the first time as a group, understand the reason for setting up the committee and most importantly, the FA’s expectation of them.

The panel is chaired by Dr Francis Eyiah Bediako, a Mathematics and Statistics Lecturer at the University of Cape Coast and Vice-Chairman of the Central Regional Football Association. Other members include Madam Innocentia Agbavitor, a retired FIFA Referee, and Mr Paul Ayamba, Chairman of the Match Commissioners Association of Ghana.

“You would realise that, until very recent times, the FA didn’t have this committee in place. In fact, since we took over on October 25, 2019, the council decided against the formation of this committee due to some bad feedbacks that we received from members of the football fraternity. However, following a series of engagements with all stakeholders, the council made a U-turn and had a lengthy discussion with the Referees Committee, for which reason a decision was taken for us to bring back the Match Review Panel,” the GFA president told the committee.

“In deciding on the composition, the council was very careful on who we selected to be part of this three-man committee. In the end, we believe we have three noble people of the highest order; three people whose integrity is never in doubt and three people we believe will protect the integrity of our industry and these three people we found in Dr Bediako, Mr Paul Ayamba and Innocentia Agbavitor,” he explained.

“We believe that, in these three, we have a very good team who would review all games as possible, and all incidents as reported by the match reports and recommend actions or otherwise to be taken by the football association.”

“We believe that this team has a big role to play to ensure that our referees really go by the laws of the game,” he added.

Improving refereeing

For his part, the chairman of the committee, Dr Eyiah Bediako, said: “I think this is a special opportunity given to us to work. It is something we love. We thank you very much and we hope to work hard to improve refereeing in Ghana.”

The panel has been set up to review incidents recorded in official league footages and take appropriate decisions to refer the incidents to the tribunal based on the rules of the game as outlined on a report sheet.

The committee will operate independently from the GFA Referees Committee.