WEEKLY WHINE

There's hope for the US yet

In the United States, sports are rarely a life or death issue. [Depending upon who wins the NCAA men's basketball tournament, that is.] For that reason, American commentators have a tendency to condemn any sport that allows disasters such as that in Accra, Ghana on WED 09 MAY 2001, when 120 lives were lost in a stampede.

However, what is usually lost on Americans is that football officials, like any reasonable people, don't allow these tragedies. The Confederation of African Football is urging its members to increase stadium security and to avoid firing tear gas in packed grounds. At the Accra match between bitter crosstown rivals Hearts of Oak and Asante Kotoko, fans began to riot during the match, causing police to fire tear gas into the stands. The stampede then occurred as the spectators tried to flee.

The story was similar at Ellis Park in Johannesburg, South Africa last month, where the death toll reached 43; in Kinshasa, DR Congo last month, where ten were killed; in Accra last year, where rioting didn't take any lives but still prompted CAF to ban Hearts of Oak from playing African tournament games at home; and in Harare last summer, when 13 perished at a World Cup qualifier between Zimbabwe and South Africa.

In several cases, overcrowded stadiums were a contributing factor. Another recent disaster occurred in Asia, when a roof collapsed at a stadium in Tehran, Iran. As a result of this, the Asian Football Confederation is now requiring its members to conduct detailled safety checks of their stadiums, and it is stressing the importance of keeping attendance below capacity; it has asked all event organisers to ensure that "not one more person is admitted".

Sadly, though, the same standard of accountability was not in place in many African nations. After the tragedy in Harare, an inquiry placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of the police force, though none of the officers concerned have been prosecuted. Only now is CAF encouraging preventative measures. CAF's Executive Committee is to meet this week to study the recent disasters. With any luck, the committee will identify a list of actions that national organisers and stadium crews can take. In addition, western African sports ministers met on WED 16 MAY 2001 to discuss the most recent Accra incident, amongst others, and to search for ways to avoid a recurrence.

In the meantime, though, it appears that one positive step has been taken. To my initial dismay, I found in this week's Sports Illustrated that self proclaimed cynic Steve Rushin was taking on the rash of football disasters in his weekly column. But unlike many reporters in the United States, Rushin managed to find his way to the root cause: "The vast majority of soccer disasters are the result of decrepit stadiums and/or horrendous crowd control, not, as is widely assumed in the US, hooligan violence." [The word not was italicised in the original.] Clearly this sport has the capability to raise compassion in a man whose childhood memories involved the Minnesota Twins.

Rushin has correctly recognised that fans in Africa and Asia are not inherently more rowdy or more uncontrollable than their American counterparts. The New York Giants wouldn't dream of trying to pack more than 79,464 into Giants Stadium, nor would they even consider playing a game there without a full complement of properly trained security guards. For those of you operating under the delusion that American fans are indeed well behaved, I suggest you go to a Buffalo Bills game and sit behind the end zone.