NAPSS, NACOSS GRAB WINS WHILE NESA, NUASA CRASH OUT……….. AS CRU DEPARMENTALS REACHES SEMI-FINAL STAGE

Last week Friday, NAPSS played IREPSA in the final match of group A stage qualifications in a somewhat boring manner. The match did not kick off on time, the lines-men were inexperienced and ostensibly novices, the ginger in both teams was low and also, the sun was still up in the sky when the match started. It was very much sunny when it kicked off and more so, there was only a goal recorded in the match.

The match started by 5:30 pm, the referee remained unchanged (even with his wrong calls and absurd officiating in past matches), the lines-men initially were Olaoluwa and Nedu, who both were apparently unfit for the task. Captaining both sides were OJ Israel and Chukwudi for NAPSS and IREPSA respectively.

Throughout the first half, both teams lacked clear precision, vision and tact playmaking. A strange, bizarre, uninteresting, unfathomable and absolutely bland style of football is what I can describe it with! Even with the disallowed goal which was scored for NAPSS by OJ Israel in the 30th minute, the game still lacked sweetness and elements of interest. To further compound the situation, the officiating was poor, shameful and opprobrious to the game of football. “Imagine disallowing a clear goal for NAPSS”, why? The linesman did not see it, and also, the referee couldn’t fathom if the goal was legit or not!!! Who does that?? The FA needs to look into this situation of indecisiveness on the part of the referee. It is becoming frequent, implicating and amateur for the beautiful game of football. Poor officiating killed a large part of the game.

The second half saw the introduction of new linesmen for the game. Ubong and Idris came in to replace the ineffective Ola and Nedu. Also, the second half witnessed a refined, budding energy from both teams as both aimed to outscore the other. The game progressed with a little bit of improvement up until the 65th minute when Osimeh nodded home a free-kick from Dexter to score the only goal of the match. Subsequently, it was just an ordinary game! Very ordinary! The match ended 1:0 in favour of NAPSS. I couldn’t pick a Man-Of-The-Match for the game. What about the Flops? More than 6 players flopped throughout the game!

However, On Saturday, in the early hours of the morning NESA, who had been earlier, condemned to the last spot in its group, defeated NUASA by 3 goals to 2 in a game that contained so much fun, interest and action. AY scored a hatrick for NESA while Oshin and Daban scored for NUASA. (That brings me to this observation: “Daban was an unused NAPSS player, yet he played for NUASA and scored a goal on his debut: then, my question is, “Why did NAPSS allow Daban to leave the team?” Well, I guess, the Manager of the NAPSS team has an explanation to tender to this question”).
Later on in the evening, NACOSS played NABAMS in an interesting match which would determine the eventual qualifying team between NESA and NACOSS. Surprisingly, NACOSS defeated NABAMS by 2 goals to 1 despite the popular belief that NABAMS would thrash NACOSS. Thus, NACOSS qualified alongside NABAMS. Eventually, for the semifinal stage, NACOSS, NABAMS, NAPSS and GEMSSA would slug it out in knockout games which would come up subsequently.