NSC ADMITS LAPSES AT STARS MATCH (PAGE 31)

The National Sports Council (NSC) has admitted that there were ticketing and security lapses, which nearly marred the beauty of the 2010 World Cup/Africa Cup qualifier between the Black Stars and Lesotho in Sekondi last Saturday.
The Chief Executive of the NSC, Mr Prince Oduro-Mensah, who was addressing a press conference at Essipon said what happened should be a serious lesson for all stakeholders to ensure that such incidents did not reccur at any of the venues in the country in future.
Mr Oduro-Mensah explained that tickets were not sold in advance because tickets for the match did not have any security features which could prevent people from duplicating them.
He stressed that since the match was not a tournament, it was not economical to print tickets with security features.
"At the planning stage of the game, we all thought that there was the need to fill the stadium to capacity just to keep the crowd behind the Stars, and we even gave some tickets on gratis, hoping that we would achieve our aim. But we were overwhelmed by the crowd," he said.
He said instead of 20,000, about 50,000 fans turned up wanting to enter the stadium by any means possible, with even those with or without tickets forming queues, making, it difficult to control the crowd.
Mr Oduro-Mensah also attributed part of the problem to the failure to educate the public as to which gates at which they could get tickets and where those with tickets should pass.
He said the absence of such vital information, and the quest to fill the stadium, coupled with the overwhelming crowd, led to the agitation.
Asked why they did not open the gate early enough to avert the problems, he said "people asked why we did not open the gate at about 7 a.m. but that cannot be possible because before the gate is opened, we have to ensure that security inside the stadium is in place to take care of those who enter, those selling and checking tickets have security men to guard the stands, fire officers are in place and also that all keys to the gates and vital locations are available."
Asked why the organisers did not do anything to prevent the fans from running to the pitch after the match, he said the rules of the game required that every gate should be opened at the end of every match to ensure that people easily moved out of the stadium.
"We did not expect that people would go out of their way and run to the pitch, but it is a challenge we have identified and next time we will use crash barriers and security men to block those openings," he said.
He, however, commended the fans, as well as police commander, DCOP Mohammed Ahmed Alhassan, and his team for helping to control the situation.