On Monday the 6th of November 2023, the MBBS female team went head to head against the Nursing team at the Provost Cup semi finals which held at Zik Maracana by 4:00pm. After about 33 minutes with an added 7 minutes extra time, the laborious game ended one to nil with the nurses victorious and qualified to move to the finals.
UIMSAites had moved on from the agonizing defeat and were in a normal unsuspecting state until yesterday when a message from the UIMSA Sports Committee to the Provost Cup Planning Committee was released causing looming doubts on the finality of the progressing teams following the results from Monday.
The Press decided to speak to the coach of the female football team, Ayotunde Oni to find out more about the situation. In his words “Big shout out to my players honestly. They are dogged warriors and they didn’t accept defeat. That was where our breakthrough came in.”
Apparently, It all started when star player, Chidinma Onyiuke voiced out that she felt something was wrong as she had noticed a lot of substitutions from their opponents during the match. She then informed the UIMSA Sports Secretary, David Akinnusoye who discovered that there were twelve names altogether in the nurses’ overall line up for the course of the tournament and sent an open letter to the Provost Cup Planning Team. It is important to note that the rules guiding the tournament state that only ten registered players are eligible to participate in the 6-aside matches.
The coach emphasized that even if the two extra players in the line up did not play, it was still an offense regardless but perhaps not one heavy enough for a disqualification. Thus the reason behind the additional names in the lineup was investigated in a two-step process, to firstly ascertain whether it was due to human error and then if in fact more than ten players had played on the pitch in the course of the tournament which would be a finalizing indication for disqualification.
After a series of persistent investigation from the team assisted by Sunskid, an avid fan of the game who usually takes pictures and recordings of matches, It was discovered that eleven players eventually participated during the course of the tournament and that sealed the disqualification and end of the run of the nursing female team.
The nursing team also put out a false allegation following these events claiming that the MBBS team drafted more than ten players into the tournament as well but that was declared false as it was only names of players split by the nurses to occupy extra places on the line up.
The MBBS team due to these changes have now progressed to the finals and will be playing against Environmental Health Science team on Friday 10th of November. With the nursing team automatically out of the tournament, Human Nutrition are now owners of the bronze medal.
Osaretin Vanessa Ehiorobo