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Eddie Chikamhi Senior Sports Reporter
THE Premier Soccer League have pledged continuous improvement in the quality of match officiating in the domestic league after engaging the new ZIFA Referees Committee yesterday for the first time since it was appointed.
The meeting, which was held in Harare yesterday, was attended by high-ranking officials from the PSL secretariat fronted by chief executive Kenny Ndebele and members of the new committee led by retired referee Norman Matemera.
It comes as match officials in the domestic league have often come under heavy criticism for failing to uphold the highest professional standards.
The league’s spokesperson Kudzai Bare yesterday told Zimpapers Sport that the meeting was a success.
“Remember this is a new committee,” she said.
“We hadn’t sat down with them before like we have done with the other committees. So, we were just trying to find ways in which the PSL and the Referees Committee can continuously work together well; iron out a few issues and trying to find ways to try and continuously professionalise Zimbabwean football.
“So, it’s just part of the engagements we have with all our major stakeholders. It was important to meet them and discuss how we are going to proceed working together and things like that.”
The referees’ committee is only six weeks into the office after it was installed by the new ZIFA Normalisation Committee on August 1 as part of restructuring process prescribed by FIFA.
Matemera, who was the 2018 Referee of the Year, his deputy Faith Sibanda, Stella Ruvinga and Kuda Rusina were part of the meeting yesterday. The other member of the committee is Tendai Bwanya.
Referees have often come under criticism for poor officiating. At some point this year, FC Platinum coach Norman Mapeza threatened to walk away from the game in protest while stakeholders have also apportioned blame to “biased” decisions by the match officials for fanning violence in some of the games.
“Those are some of the things that we touched on and what we need to do to professionalise football and to have improved match officiating and also for our key stakeholders to understand what’s involved when it comes to how the referees conduct their duties and how they arrive at certain decisions during league games.
“Some of the critical points that came out was the need then to educate all our stakeholders and hopefully to have continuous training for them so that they are abreast with new trends and also even all our stakeholders to understand what it entails when we talk about match officiating so that they also understand some of the referees’ decisions without pointing to bias every time.
“From their own side, the referees made us ware of some of the issues that they face. I can’t really delve much into the details, but I think it was quite a successful meeting. We discussed key issues, and we are confident that it’s going to help us in terms of improving our football in general,” said Bare.
Online Reporter