Ghana’s stadium facility management body National Sports Council insists it is not to blame for unavailability of floodlights at the Accra Sports Stadium which caused Hearts of Oak’s clash with Heart of Lions to be abandoned on Wednesday. 

Though the body admits anticipating the game could face challenges as there was no arrangement put in place by the organiser, an admission that highlights a worrying trend of proactiveness.

“We cannot be blamed for what happened because the organisers knew very well we had to sit down and make arrangement for the use of the floodlights as the game was going to kick off at 4 PM local time,” National Sports Council official Hamid Issaka told Asempa FM.

You can blame the organisers and not us.”

Poor management of stadium facilities across various stadia in the country has dominated the headlines for a while now but no action seems to be taken.

The Accra Sports Stadium, which hosted the game is one of the four stadia that anchored the 2008 AFCON in Ghana but poor stadium management has left the facility in dilapidated state.

Scoreboard at the Accra Sports Stadium is also not working and somehow influenced the Ghana Football Association to move the 2015 AFCON qualifier against Uganda to Kumasi.

The Match Commissioner on duty signalled to the center referee to end the game around 18:14 GMT as floodlights at the stadium could not be put to use to enable the game to continue forcing GHALCA to schedule a rematch on Friday.

The game kicked off at 16:00 GMT per the organisers decision and that obviously did not help the course of the game as floodlights are the stadium are known not to be working.

Hearts and Lions had headed for penalty shootouts after a 1-1 aggregate draw.

The winner of Friday’s rematch will play AshGold in the final.