Fuba finally punish ‘strangled’ referee
Suspended: Referee Onen has been banned for five matches. FILE PHOTO
What you need to know:
- With hind sight, the move seemed like an expert taekwondo move, the kind of thing you spend three years learning to pull off at the Uganda Taekwondo offices in Kisugu, Muyenga.
- For his part in going to Onen and starting the exchange that triggered off the incident apparently with the words he said to Onen, Hassan Ahmed another City Oilers manager was suspended for five City Oilers games.
Kampala. Betway Power are within one game of being confirmed as top seeds in the National Basketball League regular season following Friday’s 68-59 win over Pemba Warriors.
That, however, has seemed of little importance over the past two weeks in the basketball fraternity.
A week after an altercation between City Oilers officials and referee Alex Onen and a leak of the ruling, domestic basketball governing body Fuba finally released their findings and ruling on the matter last Friday.
A letter signed by Fuba Vice President Technical and Competitions Joseph Manano, states referee Alex Onen was found to have violated article 7.01, subsection b (iii) for the unsportsmanlike way he held Hassan Ahmed.
He was subsequently suspended for four weeks and won’t be appointed to officiate any Fuba supervised games with the penalty derived from article 7.01, subsection (e).
That however seemed to contradict the federation’s stance on Mohamed Santur who admitted to “swinging in and grabbing” referee Onen in an arm lock by the neck from the back.
Article VII of the Fuba code of conduct (b) states that ‘all directors, club players coaches, club officials, referees, table officials and participants who get involved in a fight and or violent acts of any nature on the court. The fact that you may feel provoked by another person is not an acceptable excuse.”
With hind sight, the move seemed like an expert taekwondo move, the kind of thing you spend three years learning to pull off at the Uganda Taekwondo offices in Kisugu, Muyenga.
Santur fined
Fuba however ruled that Santur who is the national teams’ manager and remains extremely popular in basketball circles for his unpublicized philanthropist acts “only acted by instinct.”
“A letter of caution shall be written to him to refrain from the consistent court side open expressions for the image of national team, his club and his own image and also to meet part of Alex Onen’s medical bill (131,500/=),” the ruling stated.
For his part in going to Onen and starting the exchange that triggered off the incident apparently with the words he said to Onen, Hassan Ahmed another City Oilers manager was suspended for five City Oilers games.
