Arokoyo Kehinde: A New Dawn For UADS Football Team?

Football is a game that has an enormous fan base especially when compared to other games in the world of sports. It is a game of passion as the heart break and pain that comes from the loss of one’s team can be immeasurable, likewise the joy, after winning a match. For a lot of passionate fans of the UADS football team, the former has always been the case. In spite of the individual accolades  garnered by members of the football team, the UADS football team is still associated with a significant number of defeats.

          The Faculty of Dentistry Football Team

The male football team of the association ended her spell in the last faculty cup with a defeat, where the visiting faculty of science, beat the UADS football team by 11 goals to one. This preceded the team's failure to go beyond the group stages for more than three consecutive sessions in the faculty games. It then begs the question - "What exactly is the challenge?"

The relatively low population of the faculty has always been an issue, for the team. In an interview with Joseph Adeyemi, the past sports secretary of the association, he stated that "I feel the major problem affecting UADS sports is our small population, especially when it comes to major games like football, basketball and volleyball as this has created a non competitive environment resulting in poor attitude toward games". Also, the dominant starters in the team have usually been from the clinical arm in UCH over the years. Mr Adeyemi further explained that "As regarding favouritism, it happens because the clinical arm usually have more experience in competitions than the preclinical arm. However, I was glad I could work with members of the preclinical team for games when the clinical students were unavailable due to exams".

The preclinical team depends a lot on the clinical arm such that all members of the preclinical arm of the football team are required to train in UCH. All football equipment are equally stored there. To tackle this issue, Mr Kehinde Arokoyo, the present sports secretary of the association, has promised in his manifesto, that, “If elected, I plan to conduct training sessions in UI for preclinical members of the faculty’s football team”.

The faculty football team is also fraught with an equipment maintenance problem as players have had to play with dirty and/or mismatched jerseys because the appropriate jerseys were missing, even though the previous sports secretary saw to acquisition of new jerseys. We hope the present sports secretary will address the issue of maintenance of jerseys in addition to his plan “to imprint the UADS logo and numbers on the faculty’s jerseys”, in the football section of his manifesto. 

Furthermore, members of the team usually show up late for matches, causing a delay in the games. This particularly branded the team late comers of the tournament.

Like every other football team, winning is the only objective, and the case is no different with the UADS football team. But this objective has not been achieved in recent times, and this is perhaps the reason why there has been a decline of interest in both the fans and players of the football team. 

When asked about their thoughts on the UADS Football Team, a concerned player Mr Mbam Ndubuisi, asserted that "I almost lost interest in the team though I understand that we don't have adequate numbers, but we can still work with what we have to achieve great things. Also, most of us don't take the team as seriously as we should". An anonymous member, stated that “clinical guys handling of equipment is an issue sometimes for interfaculty matches that are played in UI…most times they’re not free, so the jerseys reach us late”. Mr Okelue, another player of the team, said “There should be preclinical consideration too. If we are holding 3 trainings, 2 can be at UCH and 1 at UI”.

In an interview session with the present sports secretary, he reiterated his plans stating that “My main goal is to further bring in the preclinical guys and make them the major focus, as they have the most time. Also, I have plans on organizing training sessions inside UI for the preclinical players”. 

Following his inauguration into the executive council this year on the 4th of June, and having spent about three months in office, we hope Mr Arokoyo sets his plans, as regarding the change needed in the preclinical football team into motion, considering the particularly short duration of the present 2021/2022 executive council tenure.

  

Alonge Razaq Adebayo.