By Chernor Alimamy Kamara
A delegation made up of 22 players and 14 officials of Sierra Leone’s female Under 20 side left Freetown on Tuesday 16th May for the eastern headquarter city of Kenema in preparation for the upcoming West Africa Football Union tournament.
Shooting Starlets will set up their training base in Kenema for the tournament which begins on 22nd of May in Bo. SLFA sources say so far six countries have confirmed their participation. Sierra Leone has just concluded the nation’s first national female football league with analysts saying there are brighter days ahead for female football in the country.
Meanwhile the Sierra Leone Football Association (SLFA) in partnership with the Federation of International Football Association (FIFA) has a ten-day training course for over sixty Assessors, Instructors and Elite Referees on the 14th May, 2023 in Bo city.
In his statement, Harold Nat-Johnson, the first Vice President of SLFA, thanked the FIFA facilitators Professor Lim Kee Chong and Fitness Instructor Ephraim Mark Mzengo for imparting ‘valuable’ knowledge to the country’s elite referees. He added that the training will invariably bring about the much needed improvement in the country’s league refereeing.
He also congratulated the participants for successfully going through the FIFA knowledge sharing exercise, admonishing them to execute their jobs as referees professionally at all times.
“As a federation, we will continue to recommend hardworking and quality referees for enlistment into FIFA, CAF and WAFU tournaments,” he said.
In his statement, the Lead facilitator of the training who was also a former FIFA World Cup and Africa Cup of Nations referee, Professor Lim Kee Chong, expressed great delight over the performance of the participants. He said, with the crop of referees trained, there is great prospect for the development of refereeing in Sierra Leone.
He added by requesting SLFA to pay more attention to the referees department, noting that referees in every country must be seen as international ambassadors.
Copyright © 2023 Politico (17/05/23)
