Federation of Uganda Football Associations (FUFA) President Eng Moses Magogo held a meeting to discuss urgent matters on refereeing in Uganda.
Eng. Magogo chaired this meeting on Tuesday 4th January 2022 at FUFA House in Mengo comprising of the three FUFA Vice Presidents Justus Mugisha, Darius Mugoye and Florence Nakiwala Kiyingi.
FUFA Referees Standing Committee chairperson Brian Miiro Nsubuga, Uganda Premier League Board Chairman Arinaitwe Rugyendo, FUFA CEO Edgar Watson, the Deputy CEO- Football Decolas Kiiza, and the FUFA Competitions Director Hajat Aisha Nalule also attended.
The FUFA President highlighted the importance of refereeing in any competition with the responsibility of the Federation in developing, promoting, assessing, disciplining, and correcting the referees.
At the moment, we are almost in the middle of the season using the StarTimes Uganda Premier league as the yardstick. We are going into the mid season where clubs will be doing players transfers and there has already been a sign that there is going to be a tough competition in the second round. We would like to use what we have observed in the matches so far to try going forward specifically on the matter of refereeing. It is the responsibility of FUFA to deliver good refereeing and among the nine parameters that make a competition. If we fail on refereeing or seem to be failing on refereeing, it might affect the entire competition. We might get the wrong top scorer, wrong summons to the National team depending on the statistics. So, it is very important we get refereeing correctly. There are three ways a referee is judged. One is when a referee intentionally makes a mistake, the second area when they are judged is after making a mistake as a human being because we all make mistakes and the third one is when the person judging is the one making a mistake and the referee is correct.
Eng. Moses Magogo, FUFA President
As a federation, we have a responsibility to develop, promote, appoint, asses, punish them where there is indiscipline and correct them where correction is needed and that’s what we deliver for the game of any football competition. In this meeting, we have the UPL Board whom we have given the mandate to run our topmost league and they are representatives of the clubs because the chairman is elected by the clubs thus, we have the views of the clubs in the meeting, on the side of FUFA we have the various offices in charge of football. We also have the committee in charge of refereeing and I believe we have a proper forum to discuss in detail the current situation in terms of analysis and also propose ways forward. The various parties that have different functions with recommendations will be required the implement the recommendations.
Eng. Moses Magogo, FUFA President
According to the FUFA Deputy CEO- Football Decolas Kiiza, various meetings have been held to address an issue that needs to be responded to thus improving the product of football with particular emphasis on the Uganda Premier League.
‘We have held a series of meetings towards addressing issues that need to be responded to so as to improve the product of football with particular emphasis to the Uganda Premier League. There are many issues to address which we need to pay attention to immediately about the refereeing function and a circular will be released soon for us to be able to improve in the second round.’ noted Kiiza.
