“You can only become a good artist by copying the masters,” Jean-Au­guste-Dominique Ingres, a French neoclassical painter, once said many years ago.  

Impliedly, copying, for the right reasons is not a crime especially when the motive or focus is to improve something – it may be a product or an event.

As humans or institutions, copying usually happens to attain some level of conformity or influence.  

Perhaps, the Ghana Pre­mier League non-conformity with some of the best leagues across the world was the rea­son why a development ahead of last Sunday’s match day one English Premier League (EPL) fixture between Brentford and Tottenham Hotspurs drew my attention to a few things often taken for granted.

The aforementioned game was scheduled to start at exactly 2pm so when the kickoff was delayed, it raised eyebrows among followers of the EPL. It emerged that the match was delayed due to sanitation issues inside the venue.  

The actual problem was that water was not sinking into the ground and that affect everyone at the Gtech Commu­nity Stadium. The toilets and kitchens were the immediate cause of concern as there was no flow of water from the taps at the venue, prompting fears that the match could not get underway.  

Interestingly, water flow­ing to the toilets – something often disregarded at our match venues including the major stadia across the country – was a major concern for the EPL.   It was so significant that it warranted a halt to the match day activities, including delay­ing kick-off until the problem was fixed.

As a matter of urgency, the problem was eventually resolved less than 10 minutes into the match as normal ser­vice resumed, and water sank into the ground.

The development was one I’ll urged the Ghana Football Association (GFA), the organ­isers of the Ghana Premier League (GPL) and the National Sports Authority (NSA) to copy and implement in the coming season.  

Fact is, the state of wash­rooms at the various stadia, especially the Accra Sports Stadium is nothing to write home about. As the closest venue, it feels comfortable restricting this piece to the Accra facility although interaction with staff at the other major venues and colleagues based in the regions have confirmed the situation is the same.  

On match days, a lot of fans can be seen perching at ‘corners’ and other hideouts to urinate because that is the only way to avoid the foul odour that emanates from the urinals which are unclean as a result of the lack of running water.  

And with taps not flowing most of the time, fans are compelled to resort to the use of sachet water for different purposes, leaving the stadium in a mess after the games.  

But if the English considers the issue of sanitation as a priority, it must equally be so to the organisers of the GPL and the NSA, managers of the stadium.  

What is not clear is which party – be it the GFA, NSA or the home club, is responsible to ensuring that there is free flow of water and the provision of other needs of fans since most of the clubs do not own the stadia.  

For instance, with electric­ity supply to the Accra Sports Stadium disconnected for over two weeks now, whose respon­sibility is it to provide power if there was a Premier League game to power floodlights, Public Address (PA) system and other equipment?

Maybe, in copying this brilliant example of the EPL, the GFA, NSA and clubs using some of these facilities with facilities in a sorry state must begin to dialogue over roles to play to ensure that GPL matches were played under very healthy and hygienic conditions.

We must not wait for a COVID-19 era to run hel­ter-skelter preaching about sanitation and enforcing sani­tation rules.

With or without a pandem­ic, the GFA, NSA and perhaps, the clubs must find a way to provide a healthy surrounding for the fans to watch their games. The English example is worth copying.

By Andrew Nortey