A first ever match coordinators three-day course concluded at the Fufa Technical Centre, Njeru on Wednesday as local football body, Fufa, continues building up human resource capacity in the game.
Fifty four different stakeholders including referees, administrators and the Uganda Premier League (UPL) secretariat among others participated in the event.
The exercise was mainly conducted by experienced CAF Match General Coordinator, Kabelo Bosilong.
“I thank FUFA for such a great initiative of the Match Coordinators course which has not been done by any African FA,” said Kabelo.
“You participants are fortunate that you have where to start from rather than us who had to start from the top.
“In CAF, FUFA is one of the top three FAs performing well off the pitch and I thank the Federation leaders for the great work done.
“This course will help you get the knowledge on how to organise matches and you can go from here and practice at the lowest level.”
UPL CEO Bernard Bainamani also weighed in on the benefits of the course and how it will help the smooth running of the league in the 2022/23 season.
“The Match General Coordinator in summary is the CEO of the match,” said Bainamani, “He is the overall in charge of the match activities.
“He coordinates all the activities of the match to ensure that the match is successfully organised. One of his/her main deliverables is to ensure the match starts at the scheduled kickoff time.
“Note that the Match General Coordinator is different from the match commissioner. His scope of work is more detailed than that of a match commissioner as regards match activities.”
Bainamani added: “The main objective of GC training in Uganda is to ensure improved match organisation standards. This will attract more spectators, sponsors, broadcasters including TV and all this is money.”
FUFA Executive Committee Member Rogers Byamukama, while officially launching the workshop on Monday, welcomed the development.
“FUFA has a structured plan to improve on matchday experiences and such courses will help to create a pool of qualified personnel to handle,” said Byamukama.
“The value of the General Coordinators Course is huge to the management of game day experience not only in Uganda but the entire region because this is the very first General Coordinators Course by a Member Association in CAF and one of our key pillars in the hat-trick is Sport.
“You cannot achieve sporting success without the conversant human resource. This is one of the critical areas we are training and as FUFA we are very proud of taking this initiative and we expect this to improve our match-day experience and the game of football in general.”