Former Hearts of Oak players, Joe Addo and Nana Banyin Crentsil have recalled how Hearts of Oak failed to progress to the African Club Championship final in the 1980s after the club's spiritualist was arrested.

Addo narrated the squad departed for the second leg of a semi-final clash in Tunisia alongside their spiritualist.

When they arrived at the Tunisian airport, the spiritualist, a female, was arrested, and the players were startled by how she was identified as not a squad member.

"Hearts of Oak were in the African Cup semi-final and were traveling to Tunisia...The spiritualist who led the team was a female. The Tunisians found out and locked her up at the airport, so she didn't even enter Tunisia," he told Dan Kwaku Yeboah TV on YouTube.

When asked how the spiritualist got identified, Addo said: "Nobody knows how."

Nana Bayin interjected and gave further detail to the story revealing that, the lady had a male passport.

"The thing is, she is a woman but had a male passport, so they arrested her at the airport and detained her."

Addo continued that they could not get the required result to sail through, hence, the match travelled to a penalty shootout which they lost.

"She was our spiritualist, so the game headed to penalties. If we had won we would've qualified for the finals. That year, Esperance won the title," he said.

Nana Banyin added that the spiritulise=t had been traveling with the team throughout the tournament, explaining how she always beat the checkpoint at the airport.

"When we travel, they put the passports together. But that day, probably somebody snitched because at that time they were almost divided."

Hearts of Oak never won the African Cup of Champions Clubs until it was renamed to CAF Champions League.

The club won the trophy for the first time in 2000 beating Esperance de Tunis and completed the year with a treble.

They are the only Ghanaian treble winners in history and the only Ghanaian club to win all three CAF inter-club competitions - Champions League, Confederations Cup, and Super Cup.




EE/KPE