Ghana Must Focus On Best Discipline - Agra

Chief Executive of the National Sports Council, Worlanyo Agra, says Ghana would be better off if she concentrate on disciplines in which she has comparative advantage in order to have realistic chances of making it on the international sporting landscape.

His comments follow the dismal showing by more than half of the 16 disciplines Ghana has sent to the ongoing 10th All Africa Games in Maputo, Mozambique, a platform where Ghana has failed to replicate the previous modest performances at the Games.

“What is the point here? Is it about mass participation or serious performances?” he asked in an interview with the Graphic Sports.

“There are obvious disciplines which are not expensive to have, but which we could easily find talents around. Those are the areas we must focus on,” he added.

Agra identified football, the nation’s past-time; boxing, which has produced at least seven world champions with credible sanctioning bodies; table tennis; badminton; cricket and baseball as the disciplines in which Ghana could compete favourably on the international scene.

He said the idea would not be to abandon the other disciplines, but “to invest greater resources into areas of comparative advantage so that we can compete with the best in the world”.

He said the other disciplines would need to be retained on grounds that talent are natural gifts that could come in any form, and, therefore, there should not be a policy to hamper anybody’s talent from developing.

Agra’s outfit is in transition from National Sports Council to National Sports Authority, which has lifted the burden of subvention off the shoulders of Government and the state, and he said it was incumbent on the individual associations to seek ways of developing themselves into serious contention at the highest level.

He said the return of the Ghana Olympic Committee to full operation after the Internationa Olympic Committee’s one-year suspension would bring Ghana sports back on track for greater successes.