Accra, Sept 17, GNA - The Administrative Manager of the Ghana League Clubs Association, (GHALCA) Kurt E.S. Okraku has partly blamed the low patronage engulfing the Glo Top Four Tournament on the absence of Accra Hearts of Oak. This year's tourney has suffered a record a low patronage at the match venues and Okraku insists the absence of competition veterans, Hearts of Oak was a great factor.

The Phobians boast of an impregnable testimony of being the only Club to have participated in all six previous editions of the annual event and their absence this year has been telling on the tournament. Okraku in an interview with GNA Sports was blunt to the effect that tournaments involving Hearts and their archrivals, Kumasi Asante Kotoko often marks a big pay day for the organizers. "It is a fact that a tournament which includes Hearts and Kotoko usually attracts natural interest. And it is very unfortunate Hearts is not participating this time round."

Okraku expressed no surprise or upset at the turnout at matches involving Heart of Lions, Liberty Professionals and Berekum Arsenal since he said they were not natural crowd pullers and it was rather Kotoko who are reputed with one of the largest following in the country. "Lions, Liberty and Arsenal are home-based teams and we are not surprised by the turn-outs but for Kotoko we are very much surprised." Okraku was yet to come to terms as to why the perennial crowd pullers have even failed to draw their fans to their favourite Baba Yara Stadium and partly cited the media in Kumasi as a contributory factor. He said most media outlets in the 'Garden City' decided to stay off of the tournament for fear of incurring the wrath of the organizers who had sold out the Media Rights to Multimedia Broadcasting Company. "What most of them did not know is we had only sold out the commentary rights, which was exclusive of previewing and reviewing of the games."

Okraku said GHALCA had envisaged such a problem regarding spectatorship, hence the need for the one-off final where they are hoping to cash-in. The final match between Dansoman-based Liberty Professionals and Asante Kotoko has been scheduled for October 26 at the Baba Yara Stadium, Kumasi.