Tanzania: Six Players Expelled From Umisseta

Tanzania Daily News (Dar es Salaam)

Nelly Mtema

23 June 2011

Kibaha — SIX players were on Thursday suspended from featuring in the Inter-Secondary School games, UMISSETA, after allegedly forging documents that identified them as students.

UMISSETA secretary, Aaron Sokoni said the games’ disciplinary and appeal committee held the players guilty of cheating and were expelled from the tournament.

He said among the players, four were from the Eastern Zone and two from the North Eastern Zone.

He named those from the Eastern Zone as volleyballs Frank John, John Alex, Augustino Chimale and footballer Frank Humbo. The quartet registered as students of Bagamoyo-based Lord Baden High School.

Also suspended and their schools in brackets were volleyballers Paul Mbwana (Muheza Muslim) and Stefano Kanyahwana (Mlalo) who featured for the North Western Zone.

He said the committee reached the decision after they were satisfied that the information tendered in the registration forms were not correct.

The students were, however, ordered to remain until the end of the games, which climaxes today and Sokoni confirmed that the results of the matches they played in will not be nullified.

In another development, co-ordinator of UMISSETA games Salum Salum have faulted the tendency by football coaches to attend the final games as part of scouting, saying the system will not offer them the best result.

Salum gave an example of national soccer team coaches, saying they normally attend finals matches ignoring the fact that there was a lot of individual brilliance at preliminaries.

“You get to identify the best talents if you watch more than half of the games, some team don’t make it to the finals, but you can see that there are some talented individuals in their squads,” he said.

Salum said they have instructed the zonal officials to pick special schools in their respective areas, whereas identified young stars will be closely monitored as well as given the needed training.

He said the aim of the games have been met since the level of competition has been very high with students showing great passion for sports.

Salum said there has also been improvement on how various sports association officials have been monitoring and ear marking talented players.

He said the games have been a source for the army teams to recruit gifted athletes.

“Army scouts have been attending from day one looking for talented youngsters.

They recruit them in their schools and train them perfectly and it is the reason why most of the successful teams are from the Prisons, JKT, TPDF, Immigration,”

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