Vipers vs Villa: Muhabi learns the hard way

In The Spotlight. Alex Muhabi and his fellow referees are in the spotlight this season for a sackful of blatant officiating mistakes. PHOTO ISMAIL KEZAALA

KAMPALA- Before Saturday’s Azam Uganda Premier League (AUPL) encounter between Vipers and SC Villa, there was anxiety over which referee would take charge of what would predictably be a charged encounter at St Mary’s Stadium, Kitende.
This followed concerns over referees William Oloya and Dennis Batte, whose confrontation with coach Fred Kajoba, culminated into a four match suspension for the latter after his Bright Stars drew 0-0 with Vipers in Mwererwe.
Fufa settled for Alex Muhabi in the game which Vipers won 1-0 courtesy of Tom Masiko’s 30th minute freekick.

“The good thing about Muhabi is that he is lenient and lets the game flow without intervening unnecessarily,” said a colleague in the ‘media box’, when several cynical fouls went unpunished early in the first half.
Except that by the end of the first half, the general consensus was that Muhabi should have laid down a marker earlier in the game.
Referees do a thankless job but sometimes there is a thin line between leniency and playing a wrong version of the rules.

Muhabi’s decision not to award a penalty when Vipers defender Shafik Bakaki appeared to handle a Joseph Nsubuga ball inside the box at the stroke of half time was the cause of a major melee.

Big decisions
The decision was interpreted as a balancing act as he had earlier denied Vipers two penalties according to their animated coach Miguel Da Costa, who also constantly needed to be kept in check by a calmer fourth official Aisha Ssemambo.

Villa players were led by goalkeeper Samson Kirya, who ran for more than 70m – from his goal, in confronting the referee, copying from their charged fans that destroyed the metallic barriers between them and the VIP stands.
Surprisingly, or not if you believe my aforementioned colleague, Muhabi did not brandish cards.
“The referee was too guilty to book our players because he had just denied us a stonewall penalty,” Villa coach Wasswa Bbosa, who ran from the technical area to intervene in the scuffle, said.
However, the referee, having learned his lesson, returned from the break as a changed man. He booked Villa’s Nsubuga as early as the 47th minute and his captain Bernard Muwanga in the 70th minute.
“I made only one or two (serious) fouls,” Muwanga said, when asked if his actions, that included endlessly shouting at linesman Lee Okello, should have seen him sent off.

Moses Waiswa entered the book five minutes from the restart while his colleagues Taddeo Lwanga and Milton Karisa, who had to hobble off late in the game after a reckless challenge from Nsubuga, saw yellow too.
Such was the aggressiveness in the game that even Masiko admitted to fouling “but I did not do it that much,” before laughing off Bbosa’s comments that the goalscorer and Lwanga should have been sent off.