2018 World Cup: SWAN tells NFF, Rohr to avoid distractions

The Sports Writers Association of Nigeria (SWAN) on Monday called on the Super Eagles’ Technical Adviser, Gernot Rohr and the leadership of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) to avoid any distractions and remain focused on the objective of delivering at the World Cup.

This call was made by the Secretary-General of SWAN, Olawale Alabi, while addressing sports journalists.

Alabi said, “Our admonition comes against recent statements credited to Mr Rohr, alleging that some journalists were being induced by players’ agents to influence his team selection, a development we find to be spurious and inauspicious.

“Having played through the qualifiers for the World Cup and being now on the verge of the competition proper, we find it somewhat disturbing for Mr Rohr to stir the hornet’s by making such allegations with the tendency of creating bad blood with the sporting press and distracting the focus of the team from the task at hand.”

He added that, “While we agree that like in every profession, there could be quacks, for which the present administration has embarked on a registration process to eliminate, there is nothing strange in sports journalists all over the world bringing the attention of a team’s management to certain players whose performances they deem fit for national call.

“In the event that they go beyond publishing and into such other activities that interfere with the process of team selection, it becomes obvious that they have gone outside their bounds and therefore incumbent on the coach to alert the NFF and SWAN to call such members to order.

“It’s unfortunate that, throughout the qualifiers and the preparations, Mr Rohr never reported any such case”, he said, adding that, “it is therefore disturbing that he would raise such matter before foreign media with just few days to our opening game”.

The Secretary-General however said, “while we consider the action uncharitable, our position would have been to challenge him to name names, but, we considered that such conflict at this time would be undermining national interest.

“For the avoidance of doubt, the position of our Association has been that Mr Rohr was given a job to do and should exercise all the freedom to take his decisions.”

SWAN said it has equally taken note of the laudable efforts of the leadership of the NFF to provide the team with all necessities, which leaves the onus of performance fully on the players and the technical crew.

The sports writers also called on all Nigerians, who they describe as the “real stakeholders”, to follow the Super Eagles with “prayers and unwavering support”.

“On the part of the sporting press, we are fully committed to the best relations and promotion of the team in furtherance of our collective national interest, while we will not also mortgaged the journalistic ideals of factual reporting and constructive criticisms,” Alabi said.

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