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The president of the Nigeria Hockey Federation (NHF), Engineer Obadiah Simon Nkom has blamed Ghana’s noisy partisan fans for his side’s loss to the hosts in the female final at the 13th African Games.
Although the Nigerian ladies held their own for four quarters before they eventually fell 4-3 to the hosts via penalties, Engineer Nkom posited that there were distractions during the shoot-out.
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While advocating a situation whereby hockey rules incorporate the ‘silence code’ that applies to tennis games worldwide, Nkom also fingered late preparations as another point in the Nigerian team’s woes.
The former ambassador and mining extraction executive recounted the personal effort that he had to embark on to convince the sports ministry to include female hockey in Team Nigeria’s contingent to Accra.
He reasoned further that it would have been a gold medal for the female flickers if they had had a continuous preparation process from the beginning.
On the whole, Nkom submitted that the feats of silver for ladies and bronze for the men in Accra show that Nigeria is on the rise in international hockey, with a verdict that they will keep getting better as the days go by.
Nkom retorted: “Congratulations, Nigeria. I am happy that the ministry reconsidered and eventually allowed the female team to participate.
“I had to fight hard to convince the ministry about this ladies’ team, and I assured them that this team they were trying to drop would bring home a medal.
“Now, we saw how they missed out narrowly on the gold, but they now have a silver, while the men got bronze. That means they would have won gold if we had left them from the beginning.”
He then harped on the need for new rules in the flickers’ game, to enhance fair play and engender better results.
Nkom expatiated: “Another thing we learnt from this competition is the need for new rules in hockey, especially regarding noise from the supporters of the host country.
“As we saw in the Nations Cup football final in Cote d’Ivoire against Nigeria, the same thing happened to us here in the female hockey final against Ghana.
“Something has to be done about how the fans were shouting at our players when they wanted to take a penalty. We should look at tennis, where there must always be silence when play is on.
“We should look into the rules and state that, for instance, where they want to play a penalty, the whole stadium must be silent. Aside from that, we must applaud our players for their fighting spirit.
“We were able to hold them during the third quarter. The game would have been concluded then. But, with the fighting spirit of our girls, we were able to hold them, and they still tried in the fourth quarter.”
The hockey boss concluded with a verdict that a lot of lessons have been learnt from Nigeria’s outing at Ghana 2024 and reckoned that those positives would be used in improving the country’s chances for better results in future continental and global competitions.
Nkom submitted: “In all, we have made more progress. The strides we are taking in hockey are there. We just came back from Oman, where we took part in the World Cup Hockey Fives.
“We played against world-ranked teams, Netherlands, European champions, Poland, Pakistan, and others. Nigeria is ranked 14th in the world, but we were not intimidated.
“We are moving. We know where we are going and where we are coming from. With more support, we’ll get there. I can tell you, we are not depleting in hockey.
“However, the major lesson we are taking back home is that we have to prepare more. We saw where Ghana went before this competition. It shows that they were well prepared, and we can do the same.
“With all lessons learnt, next time, I believe we will win gold. We are currently 14th in world hockey fives, which shows we are making progress, and we will keep on improving.”
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