By: Oma Akatugba
Lolade Adewuyi is a respected Nigerian sports journalist. He has covered a number of international sporting events especially involving the Nigerian national team, The Super Eagles. He took to his twitter handle to express his dissatisfaction at how the Nigerian Super Eagles, spend too much precious time praying on the pitch before games, at halftime and after the game.
I think it's time to rethink the number of times Nigerian teams spend gathering together for prayers during matches. Last night I watched a replay of the game against France at Brazil 2014 and noticed the disservice we may be doing to ourselves.
Short thread.@NGSuperEagles pic.twitter.com/VbM4TNdUbU
— Lolade Adewuyi (@Jololade) May 28, 2018
He continued on the thread with the following tweets:
I don’t know when this tradition started, but as long as I can recall, our teams have always gathered to pray at the beginning, at half time, at the start of the second half and at the end of the game – 4 times. This may look good but surely we need to rethink this tradition.
I would like to advocate that our teams reconsider this form of team talk/prayer. In the game against France, I noticed at half time that it took the Eagles about 3 minutes after the whistle to leave the pitch when the French were most certainly resting & receiving instructions.
When the Eagles returned after 15 minutes, they went into another prayer session. This took like 2 minutes and by the time they finished, the referee didn’t allow them to settle into position before blasting for kick off. It took a while for the Eagles to settle down.
I believe that we don’t need 4 prayer sessions in a match. We need better effective team talks and less of prayers. We hold back the time and definitely can use time better. Twice is enough, at the beginning and end. I’m sure many will disagree but let’s hear cogent arguments.