Mafco FC agrees to pay fine: Clubs punished due to poor officiation
Mafco Football Club has agreed to honour a K700,000 fine without launching any appeal after being found guilty of causing match abandonment.
The military side players led by their captain refused to continue playing and walked out of the pitch in the 75th minute in their TNM Super League match against Moyale Barracks in discontent with a referee Alfred Aziz’s decision on 16th October 2016 in a game played at the Mzuzu Stadium.
Mafco official Lt. Col. Richard Chagonapanja confirmed the club management has resolved to pay the fine.
“We accept the fine and we will pay just for the interest of football,” said Chagonapansi on Friday.
But Chagonapansi has expressed disappointment with the way referees are discharging their duties,
“Referees are the major problem leading to clubs being fined because of the way they are handling themselves”.
“They are not being professional and this is witnessed by the strange decision they make when officiating and at the end of it all, it us teams who are suffering through paying fines after we react. It is not our wish to conduct ourselves in the manner we sometimes do but we
[teams] have tempted,” he added.
Lt. Col. Chagonapansi appealed to Sulom and other relevant authorities to critically look into the officiation issue.
National Referees Committee (NRC) General Secretary Chris Kalichero has strongly rallied behind the men in black on several occasions despite team’s complaining and questioning about the perfomance of the referees.
Kalichero has expressed ignorance on the complaints and cases that Super League of Malawi (Sulom) has been handling also involving referees.
Two matches have ended pre-maturely in the month of October alone due to poor referee’s judgments.
The first one was a game involving Epac and MTV Max Bullets at the Civo Stadium with only less than 20 minutes played after referee Leo Ngoleka awarded Epac a goal after he had already blown for a free kick before the Moyale, Mafco game.
Epac game ended while MTV MAx Bullets was leading 1-0 while in the othe game, Moyale were trailing 2-0.
Meanwhile, both Ngoleka and Aziz have not been called for disciplinary action or penalized by the referees committee.
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