'Poor referees kill the game'

TS Galaxy coach Sead Ramovic has once again slammed the officials following his side's 2-1 defeat to high-flying Stellenbosch at Mbombela Stadium on Sunday.

Ramovic, who is one of the coaches who has been unhappy with the performance of the referees recently feels his side has been most undone by them since he took over at the club two years ago. The coach was not pleased with how official Siyabulela Qunta officiated in their match against Stellenbosch and called for referees to be professionalised in the country.

"I have been here for two and a half seasons and if somebody goes through our games they will see how many points we lost because of mistakes from the referees," Ramovic explained to Sowetan.

"I don't want to put myself in the situation of what happened yesterday [Sunday]. It is not good. The emotions are there and you see after two and a half seasons how many times points that we deserved were taken away from us because of the mistakes from the referees. Many times..

"Last season, we lost at least 10 points because of poor refereeing. Against Stellenbosch in the [Carling Knockout final] many unwarranted calls in their favour plus we didn’t get a penalty in the last minutes. A clear one on Samir Nurkovic in the 92nd minute of the game."

[Against Kaizer] Chiefs a clear handball we didn't get and every time what I hear it's a mistake of the referee.

"We work very hard just like other clubs do, we also have families. We are trying to improve and try to win because it is our bread, you then get disappointed when you see that referees don't get improvement."

We don’t need to get benefit from them. And we don’t want strange decisions against us. We want to work hard and because of that to win games. Just fair refereeing. Ramovic believes the only way the referees will improve is when they are professionalised by Safa otherwise mistakes will always happen week in and week out.

"I would like to see the referees get help by being professional. If we want referees to be improved, they have to get things better like education and to be professional," he said.

"Then the league will be a better one because all of us need good referees and poor referees kill the game.

"The referees are not good enough. That's why the South African referees are not in the CAF competitions recently, so we have to change something and if we don't change, we will get what we have now.

"I don't want to have these kinds of arguments with referees, but you get upset after two and a half seasons.

The standard of referees is not good enough and it's killing many teams because club owners are investing a lot of money. So in a professional league professional, the referees have to be professional in their job."