Former sports director attributes Ghana's poor showing at sporting events down to age cheating

Dr.Emmanuel Owusu Ansah has stated the questionable ages of our juvenile athletes have a role to play in Ghana’s poor display at senior level competition.

“I do not have concrete evidence to doubt the challenge the calendar ages of our juvenile persons other than my own child who are selected to represent the national at continental and world junior competitions, however logical deductions and observations have answers to this riddle.”

According to the former sports director, every scale of development comes in three fold; the cognitive, associative and automotive.

He stated that the cognitive stage occurs between 7-12 years, while the associative occurs between 8-16 and 17 years and above for the automotive.

Dr.Ansah stated that the most important phase for sports men and women is the associative stage between 8 and 16 where juveniles are groomed to develop their talents.

However, he states that the aim of these continental and junior competitions which is to test the suitability and readiness of these talents to transition from the associative stage to the automotive stage have been defeated by the false ages used by our juveniles.

“Unfortunately, most of our junior players who are supposed to be in the associative stage appear to be fully morphologically overaged, psychologically aged, biologically overaged and physiologically overaged.

Dr.Ansah cited an example in the case of Nii Odartey Lamptey and Daniel Addo who won the best player awards at the 1991 and 1993 under-17 World Cup respectively.

The former director stated that while both players were being fed like juveniles at their European clubs, they refused to grow as expected which raised questions about their calendar age.

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Story by Ghana/Joy Sports/Kweku Arhin