....after leaving behind core technical personnel*

SportsInGhana.com can reveal that all is not well with the Black Bombers squad to the Commonwealth Games which started in the Indian city of Delhi last Sunday. Ghana’s 9-member Amateur boxing team are at the Games with neither of their Technical Director, General Secretary nor assistant coaches, SportsInGhana.com understands.

Technical Director S. K. Antwi who has been in the post for eight months and was with the Bombers on their training tour of Australia just last month, has been left behind in Accra, with his role apparently taken over by boxing legend Azumah Nelson who is with the team in India.

Mr. Nelson is the Technical Director for the Ghana Boxing Authority which runs professional boxing in this country, why sources close to the nations’ amateur boxing fraternity are questioning how one person can do the jobs of two different entities at the same time.

“This is quite disturbing because professional boxing is different from amateur boxing in many ways, so it’s impossible for one person to do both jobs, at least not at the same time. This can also be described as a coup d'etat because the position is also got through an election and it requires experience which is completely not related to how good someone was as a boxer,” renowned Boxing Matchmaker Solomon Otoo Lartey has told SportsInGhana.com.

Otoo Lartey who is also Organiser of the Greater Accra Amateur Boxing Assocaition (GAABA) and therefore well-palced to spaek on amateur boxing, has a word of caution to the authorities though. “If the NSC wants someone to be the Technical Director, then they have to train him. We must not make the same mistake Argentina did by making Diego Maradona their national team coach just because he was a great player,” Mr. Lartey has warned.

Another sad story of the Black Bombers is that they have travelled to the Games with just one coach, Cuban Evagers Roberto Shavers, much to their disadvantage, according to one of the nation’s leading boxing experts who pleaded anonymity.

“Once you have more than three boxers, you need two or more coaches because when one is in the ring with a boxer, there should be another coach preparing other boxers outside either in training, taking them to make their weights for a fight the next day or preparing them for their fight. A coach must also watch other fights of potential opponents to devise a plan against them. How can one coach do all these?” he ended with the question.

But the most critical aspect of the absence of all of local coaches Ofori Asare, Vincent Akai Nettey and Daniel Lartekwei Lartey in the Black Bombers camp at the Commonwealth Games is the resultant lack of effective communication.

Most of these boxers are not fluent in English and rely on the local coaches to speak to them in their own language, which is well known to all, including the authorities who decided to send just the Cuban head coach of the team to India. “Communicating in the local language is also an advantage because the opponents have no chance of understanding what the coach tells the boxer,” explained matchmaker Otoo Lartey.

SportsInGhana.com enquiries at the National Sports Council could only yield very scanty information, but we can also reveal that there is an uneasy relationship between GABA (Ghana Amateur Boxing Association) Chairman Ray Quarcoo and many of his lieutenants, Secretary General Kwame Amponfi included.

Mr. Amponfi is reportedly on leave, why he could not join the team for the competition in India. But the Secretary is the NSC CEO’s representative at the association and consequently the team. He is also the man who will write and present a report on the team’s participation when they do eventually return home.

So why will a leave which could have been postponed be the excuse for Mr. Amponfi’s absence on the team? “It’s difficult to understand let alone explain. But rumours have it that the Chairman and Secretary clashed and had a misunderstanding during the team’s tour of Australia, money issues included,” our anonymous source further disclosed.