Sports minister says no foul in Belize/Mexico game
Team Belize won silver at the COCABA games in Cancun, Mexico. But despite the silver cup and the heroes welcome given to the players, there is still an air of doubt as to whether the governing body, the International Basketball Federation (FIBA), will accept the results earned on the court. Minister of Sports Elvin Penner is going further, and at the groundbreaking for the Marion Jones Stadium on Monday, he said that his ministry is of the opinion that the call that lost the game against Mexico was dead wrong.
Elvin Penner, Minister of Sports
“It was a ridiculous call. There was absolutely no rule that you can pull out of the basketball rules that would even have indicated a foul. I spoke to our own official ref that was a part of the games, Mr. Gill. I asked was that a flagrant foul and he said of course not, it could never have been a flagrant foul. He said it wasn’t even a foul. I could understand the ref making a judgment call there—we’re all human—calling a foul. But if the second referee saw what was happening, he should have definitely called a conference and spoke to that referee and overturned that flagrant foul to a regular foul. I would just want to say one thing; in my opinion, it is for the better. Everything happens for a reason and from the get go that we did well in the games in Cancun, there was so much controversy about us being disqualified and team having played and shouldn’t have played and indeed the official ruling of the organizer at this point in time still stands. We have been disqualified, but because we appealed we were allowed to finish the competition, which is pretty much what we wanted to do to prove to the world how good we really were. But now since we have not won the gold medal, it will give them less reason to stick to their original call. The organizers would look bad now not to overturn that call and give us the silver medal because we played our hearts out.”
FIBA is yet to make its decision on Team Belize’s appeal. If Belize does win the appeal, the team will move on to the 2010 Centro Basket Tournament.
