TCC: Organisers hold symposium for referees as new season kicks off

The Creative Football Championship known as TCC will begin a new football season on Saturday.

Before that, it held a symposium for referees on Friday in Ikenne as part of the kick-off activities.

Having organised two successful seasons in the last two years, the organisers met with the referees to prepare for a new and seamless season.

The symposium focused on how the relationship between players and referees can be improved and also on the new modifications by the organisers for the new season.

During the opening speech, the Director of the League, Olumide Ajibolade, told participants the TCC began in 2020 after the COVID-19 period and it took nine months to plan in terms of organisation and including teams that have a shared vision.

Ajibolade, who is also the coach of Beyond Limits, said that the league was created to solve a need for the inadequate competition from the “NFF to NLO 2 club sides”.

“Another was the development of grassroots football, which involves the need for more sponsorship deals to be made for all the clubs. Every club contributed the same amount of fees, with no bigger shareholders. The third season begins tomorrow and I can tell you that most private leagues don’t survive up to three seasons,” he added.

Achievements recorded by the league in the last two seasons were that no single match was abandoned and no referee was assaulted in all 184 and 129 games, respectively.

Ajibolade continued, “Thus the symposium is to improve the most critical part of the TCC as the league begins on Saturday.”

Meanwhile, the Chairman of the TCC, Bankole Atiba, also addressed the referees to put professionalism first in their duties.

Atiba added that the TCC league is focused on creating an enabling environment for the referees to perform.

While addressing Journalists, Atiba said the vision of the TCC is to groom players who will reach the highest level of their careers.

He further added that the league had achieved in terms of players’ transfers abroad because of the standard and competitiveness.

“As I speak with you, not less than 10 players are in the process of moving out of the country. That’s one thing that I can say is one achievement of the TCC league. The league can only be sustainable when there are player sales.

“We also have about two players from Beyond Limits who have played in the U-17 and U-20 national teams.”

To further enable less controversial cases on the pitch, TCC organisers with its technology partners, Kiniscore will deploy video communication gadgets for the referees during the games.