Age cheats in sports punching below weight

It seems there are many people in this country who either do not know when they were born or are usually adjusting their ages to suit the circumstances.

Indeed, since the age of retirement was sadly pushed up to 60 years, there are extremely old octogenarians who still have six years to retire.

They become relics in the organisations and are frequently in and out of hospitals!

They are old and tired and out to just retire but they lied in their youth and the lie has come back haunting them in the most awkward manner.

Well, this lie is rife in Kenya and 40-year-olds have convinced themselves that they are 25 years to their own disadvantage!

A few months ago, the government began the exercise of registering all school going children in the country.

One of the requirements was the possession of a birth certificate.

The queues at the registry departments and the Huduma centres in this country can bear witness to this aberration!

It told us the story that in Kenya, there are people who are born — we are only sure of that — then they live and die without ever attaining any certificate in this country.

They do not even get death certificates. They are below the radar of the authorities and are not even in the census. They are ghosts so to speak. All that is understandable and we hope with the tightening noose, all children shall be registered and their real age noted down.

Perhaps when that time comes, Football Kenya Federation (FKF) shall cease to shame us in the continental and international fora when Under17 or U-20 matches are played.

Even before the advent of FKF, there was Kenya Football Federation and the story has always been the same. We do not seem to get the ages of the players right and we are either disqualified or to our shame, our players are dropped from competition long after we have ‘cleared’ them.
The heat on my face sometime in 2003 was the heat of joy.

Apparently, Kenya Under-17 had sloshed three goals past the Ghanaians. We were happy.

Some days later we leant that we were being suspended for having fielded overage players.

Somehow our Under-17 squad had players with full set of teeth: their knees were scarred with age; their cheekbones were tighter than wheel spanners; their knuckles were wrinkled with advancing years; their bones and sinews were too developed for their supposed age. They were sheer monsters against the little Ghanaians and the body checked them to the ground all the time and outran them.

We were cheating in broad daylight and we were caught.

A Kenyan manager whom I do not care to mention was suspected of having informed the Ghanaians of our underhand deal.

The football authorities instated some Kangaroo court to investigate his “footballing” activities.

Nobody showed up for the stupidity and it quietly disbanded.

Few days ago, three Kenyans were disqualified from the Harambee Stars Under-17 suad in the Africa Cup of Nations Cecafa region qualifiers in Dar es Salaam.

Maxwell Mulili, Lesley Otieno and Abdulmalik Hussein Abdalla are the players that Caf accused of being overage and therefore failed to get the green light to take part in the tournament in Tanzania.

FKF, in its defence, claim they have never contemplated age cheating and forever plays within the set rules of Fifa and Caf.

Allow us to doubt!