Julius Ben Enumah, the Club Licensing manager, has stated that the poor state of pitches resulted in the revocation of Berekum Chelsea and Elmina Sharks licenses to use the Golden City Park and Ndoum Sports stadium.

Before the start of the 2020/2021 Ghana Premier League campaign, clubs were given licenses to use various venues with improvements of those venues expected as the campaign progressed.

On Monday, the GFA announced that Berekum Chelsea and Elmina Sharks have seen their licenses to use the Golden City Park and the Ndoum Sports stadium revoked. Liberty Professionals suffered a similar fate last month.

In an interview with Enumah, it was revealed that the state of pitches have been the main reason for the decision.

“One thing that has been back and forth [over the years] is the standard of the pitches. Due to poor maintenance or inactions, the pitches reverse to its poor state so we need to be inspecting and monitoring some of these facilities and profiling them to know which ones need special attention and supervision,” he told Joy Sports.

“We started our spot check inspection based on reports we profiled on the 15 rounds of matches in the GPL. From matchday 16, we started the inspection at the Carl Reindorf Park for Liberty Professionals, Nana Agyemang Badu Park for Aduana Stars and the WAFA Park. The license of the Carl Reindorf Park was revoked due to the state of the pitch.”

“We spoke to the club and they [authorities] accepted our concerns and will cooperate to ensure that the state of the pitch improves as we identified in Carl Reindorf Park, Golden City Park and Ndoum Park. Some areas had the pitch without grass at all, others had their grass withered,” he explained.

He did however commend Berekum Chelsea for taking steps to improve the standard of their pitch.

“I went to see Berekum Chelsea who had constructed a new borehole and are hoping to utilize it to improve their pitch so we hope to see that the pitch return to a desirable state.”

The GFA revealed that Dreams FC, Eleven Wonders and Bechem United were warned to improve their facilities on Monday. Mr. Enumah, who led in the inspection of those club’s facilities, encouraged them to make improvements.

“The other clubs have been asked to maintain their facilities and also put under strict supervision with one of them [Dreams FC] owning the Theatre of Dreams at Dawu. We will wish that they continue the improvement and maintenance culture that has been instilled there. It is the same as Techiman [Eleven Wonders] and Bechem as well.”

“We will also go round to inspect other facilities. We want to try as much as possible to be preventive instead of reactive. We will do spot check inspection of some other facilities like the Akoon Park, the CAM park in Aiyinase, the Cape Coast stadium, the Accra Sports Stadium and the Len Clay Sports Stadium,” he concluded.

The inspection was made after matchday 15 was completed.