By Hassan Osman Kargbo
The issue of electricity has been a problem all these while and it has extended to the football world in the country. At the ongoing Leone Rock Premier league, a match between Mighty Blackpool vs Freetown City FC was cancelled due to power cut on April 21st at the newly refurbished SLFA Academy Field Kingtom Freetown.
The match was abandoned in the second half of play because of lack of electricity supplies in the field. The faulty generator that was responsible to supply electricity to the floodlights went off at the picked of the match that left a lot of fans wondering whether Sierra Leone is ready to reach the international standard.
The match came to an abrupt halt during the 54th minute of play, with the Tiss Tass Boys leading 1-0. Sadly, the situation which was initially thought to be a minor fault resulted to the match being called off immediately with fans utterly disappointed as they resorted to using their mobile phone lights as guide to exit the dimly lit SLFA Academy Field, Kingtom.
Moreover, a press release from the Premier League Board has communicated a continuation of the remaining minutes to be played under a hot burning afternoon kick off at 3PM on Monday 22 April 2024 at the same venue with the score line still intact in Mighty Blackpool’s favour.
The issue of power outage at the SLFA Academy has raised questions about the quality and sustainability of the generators procured by the Sierra Leone Football Association to generating power supply in all four newly installed artificial turfs across the four regional cities in the country.
