Israel Saria
The Tanzania Amateur Volleyball Association (TAVA) has been challenged to improve the refereeing aspect of the sport with a view to make domestic competitions a success.
A section of the domestic volleyball stakeholders have voiced their concern on the need to upgrade the status of the sport’s referees in the country after attending this year’s Mainland Volleyball Club Championship held in Tanga earlier this month.
Dar es Salaam-based volleyball enthusiast, Frank Mganga, was of the opinion that TAVA should conduct short seminars before the beginning of all domestic competitions and update match officials on any changes that have been applied to the sport’s rules.
“Referees that officiated in the Mainland Volleyball Club Championship were seemingly not prepared to successfully interpret the current rules governing the sport…although they seemed to have information on the changes, they were not sure which sections have either been changed or added to the rules,” he said.
He said the referees were clearly disorganized when it came to assigning different duties to each other, for instance, there were no clearly defined duties of the first and second referees during the matches.
“The matches also lacked line judges…I would like to advise tournament organizers to meet with referees two days before the beginning of any event and go through all changes that have been applied to the sport, as well as discussing better supervision of the games,” added Mganga.
Another stakeholder, who opted for anonymity, concurred with Mganga on the matter and insisted that TAVA should conduct courses for both referees and players on regular basis and inform the latter of whatever changes happening in the sport’s rules.
Changes that happen in the game should be available to every person that is directly involved in competitions organized by TAVA to ensure the events are run smoothly, he added.
Mganga said despite the obvious weakness, the championship was generally impressive as there was plenty of exciting matches that saw players give their all in an effort to help their respective teams excel.
The Chairman of TAVA Regional Development Commission, Alfred Selengia, said the association has already planned to organize courses for referees effective from next year so that the officials could perform their duties successfully.
By JAPHETH KAZENGA, Tanzania Daily News
Comments
Loading…