In the weeks since a ball was last kicked in the Ghanaian top-flight, three trainers have lost their jobs, with one substantive appointment being made at another club. Now, you might wonder just how a coach — three, at that — contrives to vacate his post even when he has precious little, if anything at all, to do in such practically idle times.
For the first casualty, Hearts of Oak’s Henry Wellington, the axe had been hovering over his head for a while, with the Phobians’ patchy form getting particularly worse toward the end of the league campaign’s first round. The writing was on the wall, his days numbered, and it seemed Hearts’ hierarchy — operating with a particularly sharp streak ever since American Mark Noonan took charge as CEO earlier this year — was merely biding its time to act. When it eventually did, the manner was swift, decisive, and ruthless.
For Wellington’s two more recently dismissed colleagues, Kenichi Yatsuhashi and Charles Akonnor (both former Hearts coaches, incidentally), their fate had little to do with performance issues, with their respective teams, Inter Allies and Ashantigold, 6th and 2nd on the league log. Akonnor’s case was preceded by a suspension for supposed dereliction of duty, while Allies’ statement announcing the Japanese’s exit revealed very little about exactly what necessitated the parting.
None of the three clubs has yet gone beyond naming interim replacements, but at bottom club Wa All Stars, there has been a long-term installation, with Jonas Amissah replacing the departed Sarfo Castro as the 2016 top-flight champions’ third technical head in a season that hasn’t gone too well.