By CHARLIE DUMAVI
PAPUA New Guinea Football Association (PNGFA) is currently investigating two Premier Soccer League (PSL) clubs in Lae after the players physically assaulted the match officials that resulted in the match being abounded prematurely.
Lae City FC (LCFC) and FC Morobe Wawens (FCMW) are currently under investigation following an attack on referee Martin Kit, lines men Julius Oli and Wase Bafenu during last weekend’s PSL round eight match at PNGFA academy, 11 miles outside Lae City.
PNGFA general secretary Gordon Manud condemned the players involved and said they are working on getting all the reports from the two teams as well as competition department officials and match commissioner on the ground before taking actions.
“We will take actions in relations to the incident that has occurred,” Mr Manub said.
“We want to make it fair that each side (clubs) must have something to say.
“However, we only received response from Lae city FC and we are waiting for the other team involved (FCMW) to make a comment.
“After we receive all reports then we’ll deliberate on what actions to take.”
A video footage of the incident supplied to this paper shows a FCMW player throwing continuous punches to the lines man Wase after a FCMW player went down following an attempted sliding tackle to a LCFC forward.
The video went on to show more FCMW players joining the attack and chased Wase who was escorted out from the field of play for his safety.
A source from the ground also confirmed that police were present but nothing much was done.
The incident was unfortunate for the football code that is under scrutiny following failures to prepare the national teams on time for the international tournament.
FCMW franchise owner Andrew Namuesh apologies for the unfortunate event that went out of control due to players frustrations.
“On behalf of the club (FCMW) I want to say sorry on what happened,” Mr Namuesh said.
“I did not expect that to happen and on behalf of the club I want to say sorry to the referees and PNGFA.
“It happened out of frustration from the players.”
Mr Namuesh added that there is need for more improvement from PNGFA competition department to fly in referees from other regions to officiate games similar to flying teams around to compete.
“Before the PSL kicks off, I said if you (PNGFA) want to run fair competition make sure to get referees from other conferences to come in and officiate the game so we won’t have bias decisions.
“However, PNGFA did not listen to what I’ve said and the incident happened.”
He said individual people put in a lot of funding to keep their teams in the competition, so little things such as this must be done in running a fair competition.
Nemuesh also claimed that match officials (named) have been officiating several FCMW games with many unfavorable decisions which can be seen as “bias.”
“The referees have been doing this over and over that made the players frustrated,” he said.
“We get players from the streets to get themselves busy in the competition so we must look after them.
“Play fair games so they can be happy.”
Both LCFC and FCMW have several national players listed for this season campaign.
Both teams have also represented PNG at least once in the Oceania championships and are also two of the consistent teams apart from Hekari United FC in the PNGFA sanctioned competitions from National Soccer League to PSL.
