Lae fans urged to show sportsmanship

 NATIONAL Soccer League (NSL) followers in Morobe have been warned to show sportsmanship behaviour in supporting their team at Sir Ignatius Kilage stadium in Lae

This was the observation from NSL chairman John Kapi-Natto after witnessing rain of verbal abuses poured on Hekari United players in particularly the overseas players taking part in the competition.

Kapi-Natto, who sneaked into Lae to watch Hekari take on Besta on Wednesday, said he was dumbfounded at what he witnessed and could not believe such verbal abuses were targetted at Hekari in particular the 

overseas players. 

Such phrase as “pasim gate (lock the gate), kilim ol (kill them) and salim ol i go bek long ples bilong ol (send them to where they belong) is unbecoming of football fraternity in so-called the home of soccer. 

The chairman said he was not worried about the support but such verbal abuses must not be promoted on football pitch. This was the main reason why he left supporting other codes to follow soccer.

Kapi-Natto strongly warned that if Lae supporters continued to harass or verbally abuse the visiting teams, they might well forget about hosting semi finals at Sir Ignatius Kilage stadium.

“This was the sole reason why all the finals were moved to Port Moresby because of similar incident in 2005,” he said.

Kapi-Natto said the NSL board does not want the repeat of that at Sir Ignatius Kilage stadium during the finals.

He said the multi-national Hekari had been the target of soccer critics.