KPL: How FKF erred on league standings

So, when and how were K’Ogalo at the top of table at mid-season?

League body insists Gor Mahia were not on top of table at halfway stage and at no time did all teams play 16 matches as FKF suggests.

The Kenyan Premier League, the body legally mandated to run the top tier league, maintains Football Kenya Federation (FKF) errored big time for “purporting to declare Gor Mahia champions based on first leg results.”

In a blow-by-blow match-up account KPL has sought to demonstrate a glaring error of judgement besides citing a Sports Disputes Tribunal ruling on January 10, 2017 that placed an injunction against FKF from interfering with the running of the league until September 24 this year.

At 12:28pm on April 30, Nick Mwendwa tweeted Gor Mahia as KPL champions, despite another Tribunal ruling rendered on March 17 calling time on his tenure at the helm of the football association.

He tweeted at the time: “Ooh and Congratulations Gor Mahia! You are champions once again and you will represent Kenya on the champions league Next season. Lets do this!”

Later that evening the FKF secretariat released a statement justifying the “decision” citing a Caf letter and the COVID-19 situation in Kenya. FKF also argued that government curfew and banning of all public made it untenable to “conclude the 2019/2020 league season in time for the kickoff of the 2020/2021 season.”

Mwendwa proceeded to throw the book at KPL saying: “In light of the aforementioned and guided by Rule 2.6.1.2 of the Rules and Regulations Governing Kenyan Football ‘Where the league format due to circumstances of force majeure fails to be completed within the season, the league winner shall be determined as follows; Where all the Clubs in the league have completed the first round fixture but less than 75% league games have been played, the table standings at the end of the first round shall be considered as the final table standing of the league.”

All these, according to KPL is wrong, and the only way out is to declare the season, “null and void.”

KPL’s Leagues and Competitions Administrator Michael Kirwa explained as follows:

Why Round 17 was mid-way point?

The reason for this is because of match-up count. Match-up count is basically a situation where all teams are level on number of games played. At the midway point, the match-up count for all teams should be n-1, where n is the total number of teams in the league. The (-1) is used because a team cannot play itself.

So with Sony Sugar (relegated for not honouring three fixtures) out of the league, 17 teams remained.

That meant that the match-up count at the mid-way point reduced from 17 to 16.

However, Sony Sugar’s absence meant that at any given point there was a team behind or ahead of others in terms of match-up count. This was either because they rested one round due to not “playing” Sony Sugar or they were yet to “play” Sony Sugar.

For instance at Round 16, there were three scenarios;

i) There was a team that rested because it could not play Sony Sugar. So that team remained at 15 matches having played from R1 to R15 without rest.

ii) Then there were teams which had already “played” Sony Sugar which meant that they went to Round 16 having played 14 matches already. So when they played in Round 16, their match-up count increased to 15 and tied with that of the team that was to play Sony Sugar in Round 16; refer to (i).

iii) Then there was a team which was to play Sony Sugar in R17. So that team went into R16 having already played 15 matches and at after Round 16, it went ahead of other teams in terms of match-up count. It had played 16 matches while most of the others had played 15 matches; refer to (i) and (ii).

So that is why R17 was the midway point because it was supposed to bring together teams which had played 15 matches and exclude the team that had already played 16 matches.

Why Gor Mahia had 3 catch-up games?

i) Chemelil Sugar vs Gor Mahia Round 2

This match was initially supposed to be played on September 18, but that did not happen because Chemelil Sugar FC changed the venue of the game from Kisumu to Kericho on September 17 due to administrative challenges on their part. The notice was too late for Gor Mahia to adjust so it was postponed.

A new date was not set immediately because at the time, Gor Mahia was still playing Caf games and KPL was not sure about how they would progress. After Gor Mahia’s elimination from Caf Champions League, the match was then rescheduled to January 22. This was later changed to January 15 because FKF changed the dates of the Betway Cup and this meant KPL had to change dates of some league rounds to accommodate those changes by FKF.

ii) Western Stima v Gor Mahia Round 8

This game was postponed because it clashed with Gor Mahia’s Caf Confederation Cup game against DC Motema Pembe. On October 26/27 (Round 7) and November 2/3 (Round 8), Bandari and Gor Mahia had back-to-back Caf Confederation Cup games. So it was not possible for them to have a catch-up league game in-between those two weekends. However after their elimination from Caf Confederation Cup, they played the catch-up game for Round 7 on November 6. The one for Round 8 was rescheduled to January 08, 2020. However the game was later pushed to February 12 because FKF changed dates of Betway Cup.

iii) Gor Mahia FC v Sofapaka FC Round 15

This game was to be played on December 14/15, but Cecafa happened and Gor Mahia could not play. Because FKF changed the Betway Cup dates, that forced the league to resume in 2020 earlier than scheduled. The league was to resume on January 11/12, but after the FKF Betway Cup dates changed, KPL resumed on January 4/5 so as to save one weekend. Between December 14/15 and January 4/5, there were only two weekends and they were used for scheduling of Round 13 and Round 14 catch-up matches. Because of the festivities it was hard to schedule a catch-up date for Round 15 in that period. Also, factoring in the FKF changes it was decided to amend the January fixtures a bit by;

- Have the league resume on Jan 4/5 with Round 16 games then followed by Round 17 on Jan 8 (this caused the postponement of that Gor Mahia match against Western Stima as a result.

- Have Round 18 played on January 12 and then give teams a two-week break to Jan 25/26 for Round 19 matches since FKF planned to use January 18/19 for Betway Cup.

- Have Gor Mahia play Chemelil Sugar on January 15 instead of January 22 so that they have one week between their Betway Cup and Round 19 games.

- Have Round 15 catch-up games played on January 29 after Round 19 matches.

This changes were also meant to protect the teams with surplus games from having to play more than 3 league matches within a 14-day period which is against KPL policy. Spacing Gor Mahia’s catch-up games by two weeks allowed KPL to adhere to that policy. Same applies to having their catch-up game against Western Stima played on February 12; it came two weeks after January 29.