Groundsmen giving us a raw deal

Many Kenyans are jobless just because they do not know where to look for a perfect job sans stress.

One of the places the many jobless youth we have around should start searching for jobs is in the stadiums.

Why do I recommend a stadium of all the place? Because therein abound plentiful vacancies for the easiest jobs that any halfwit who paid little attention to his teachers in school.

The requirements for these jobs are quite few, if there are any, and including “knowing” someone, being sadistic, lack of imagination and a down to earth careless attitude.

A tinge of hatred for sports and sportsmen in the country is an added advantage.

But there a disclaimer: You may have all these prerequisites but you will not get the job if you are not good at playing drafu; playing checkers is the most important of all the qualifications required to get employment in our stadiums.

IDLE AND BORED

The drafu board serves all the purposes and is the only thing that keeps the idle and bored workers sane by passing boundless time that weighs heavy on their shoulders for lack of something to do.

Visit any of our stadiums when there are no matches being played and you will surely see the grounds men sitting under breezy trees busy playing drafu.

They are so good at it that I am sure they can win an international competition if they could gain entry into one.

They have played drafu on thick mahogany boards till the planks have smooth depression created by the endless sliding of the pieces upon them.

Only a scientific study could possibly determine how long these chaps have been engaging in this pastime!

The drafu players seem not to care whether or not the pitches have been watered; indeed, they find it a bother to spruce up the playing surface after a match.

They will even shout out in glee whenever they discover that the taps have run dry; the celebrate every single droplet of rainfall because the heavenly showers saves them much trouble by ensuring that their drafu competition goes on uninterrupted.

Little wonder then that the playing surfaces in many of our stadiums are in a deplorable state. The result is that our players keep picking up many unnecessary injuries.

Yet, neither the drafu playing groundsmen nor the stadium management board ever takes notice of this anomaly.

I am sure those drafu lovers are jubilant whenever they behold a player carried out of the field on a stretcher. It is their goal, those vile souls!

Any time the state of our fields is tinkered with thousands of excuses are couched up to sound like reasons are spewed from those directions.

It all seems like taking care of our stadiums is such a hard job that we need expatriates to perform it for us.

For their despicable attitude the drafu playing groundsmen unwittingly give the impression that the job is unnecessary and that the stadiums can be left to their own devices.

It gives us the inkling that these people may have never seen a stadium on TV... which makes a lot of sense given that preoccupation with drafu leaves them no time for such luxury.

Watching a recent EPL match between Liverpool and Manchester City, I was not enthralled by the underlying emotions and the goal-fest that played itself out at Anfield, but rather by the impeccable condition of the pitch.

That knee slide by Michael Skrtel from the edge of the box to the waiting arms of captain Steven Gerrard at the corner flag after scoring a goal was quite some celebration.

Now imagine one of our players sliding like that at the Nyayo National Stadium without the risk of dislodging his knee caps! Clearly, the drafu players are practically sleeping on the job.

Some people may think I exaggerate when I say all this, but the truth is that the playing surfaces our stadium  needs much more care than they get.

The uneven surfaces have at times made football look like rugby because the bounce of the ball is often hard to predict.

Maybe it’s time we hired the guys who take care of our golf courses to do the job on our football fields and create drafu teams for those rascals in the stadiums!!