The reward for hard work has always been more work. But when hard work is identified, it deserves to be encouraged, not punished. And when a team is doing everything possible to get itself out of a difficult situation, the last thing it needs is for those responsible for making life easier to become part of the problem.
You might be wondering why I have chosen such a philosophical opening. Keep reading. By the time we get to the end, you will understand why, sometimes, the biggest obstacles standing between a team and success are not necessarily its opponents.
After picking up a valuable point in Kano on Sunday evening, our boys are expected to return to Aba, catch their breath, and take on Shooting Stars on Wednesday evening. On paper, this looks like a fixture designed to hand our opponents an advantage, even though Enyimba are the home team.
Shooting Stars just lost their last match to Warri Wolves in Ozoro. Our boys, on the other hand, have had to endure the long journey from Kano. One team has had the opportunity to regroup after defeat; the other has had to spend valuable recovery time travelling across the country.
Somehow, Enyimba are being asked to climb a hill before the race even begins.
Information available to us suggests that the club applied for the match to be moved to Thursday to give the players additional recovery time, but the request was turned down. That means the game is scheduled to go ahead tomorrow, Wednesday, at 4pm, unless a force majeure forces the hand of the league body.
And this is where the questions begin.
Do we deliberately make things difficult for ourselves, or have we simply become so accustomed to operating under difficult conditions that we no longer recognise opportunities to make things easier? Do we think through the consequences of today’s decisions, or do we wait until those decisions come back to hurt us before asking questions?
Because, sometimes, the problem is not that we lack the resources to solve a problem. It is that we fail to make the necessary decisions early enough, then expect the players to make up for the consequences on the pitch.
Take our travel arrangements, for example.
In March 2025, the club announced that its partnership with United Nigeria Airlines had been extended. The duration of the new agreement was not made public, but the airline’s logo continued to appear on the club’s branding materials. More recently, someone from within the club reportedly indicated unofficially that the partnership is now at the renewal stage.
Now, let us put sentiment aside for a moment.
If the partnership is still active, could we not have explored the possibility of arranging a flight from Kano to Owerri, even if the journey had to pass through Lagos? And if the partnership has expired, was there no alternative arrangement that could have been explored?
At this point, it is not even about the optics of having an airline sponsor. It is about getting the players home as quickly as possible, preserving their energy, and giving them the best possible recovery window ahead of a demanding fixture.
Our fellow Abia State club, Abia Warriors, had to fly from Lagos to Kano for a midweek fixture and then fly back for their next home match. They managed to make those arrangements without an airline sponsor. So, respectfully, what exactly is stopping Enyimba from exploring similar options?
If Abia Warriors can make the necessary arrangements to protect their players from the rigours of excessive travelling, why should Enyimba, a club with our history, resources and ambitions, be left to endure a journey that could potentially have been shortened considerably?
And before anyone starts talking about the difficulty of making such arrangements, let us remember something important: this fixture did not suddenly appear on the calendar yesterday. The clubs involved were reportedly informed of the new date on the 11th of the month. That gave everyone more than two weeks to plan for the journey.
Two weeks.
That is enough time to make enquiries, explore available options, negotiate where necessary, and put a workable travel plan in place. It may not be enough time to make every arrangement possible, but it certainly should be enough time to explore alternatives before concluding that the players must simply endure whatever comes their way.
We cannot keep talking about professionalism while treating basic planning as an optional extra. And this is where the chairman’s promise ahead of the season becomes relevant. The club chairman charged the players that their welfare would be given the utmost priority. That was a welcome commitment, and one we would all love to see translated into action.
But what exactly does player welfare mean if it does not include protecting the players from avoidable physical exhaustion? What does it mean if a team can travel for hours across the country, arrive home with barely enough time to recover, and then be expected to compete at the highest level against a rested opponent?
If flying the team home to preserve their freshness, potentially cutting more than 20 hours from the expected travel time, is not part of improved player welfare, then what exactly is? We cannot celebrate the language of player welfare on one day and ignore its practical demands the next.
And please, this is not an argument for pampering footballers. Nobody is asking the club to put the players on a private jet or roll out a red carpet every time they travel. This is about making sensible decisions that give the team a fair opportunity to perform. There is a difference between making footballers work hard and making their work unnecessarily difficult.
We may look at the players and conclude that some of them are simply not good enough. Perhaps some are not performing to the standard we expect. That conversation is valid, and nobody is suggesting that fatigue should become a permanent excuse for poor performances.
But football, like most things in life, is not always as straightforward as it appears. Circumstances matter. Environment matters. Preparation matters. Recovery matters.
A player operating on limited recovery time is not necessarily the same player we would see after adequate rest and preparation. A team that has spent valuable hours travelling may not be able to reproduce the same intensity as one that has had sufficient time to recover.
We cannot demand peak performance while simultaneously creating conditions that make peak performance more difficult.
And when the results eventually disappoint, we will be the first to ask why the players are not running, why they are losing duels, why they are making mistakes, and why the team looks exhausted.
But how much of that exhaustion could have been avoided?
How many of the problems we complain about on matchday are problems we could have prevented before matchday?
These are questions worth asking because the season is already difficult enough. We have finally picked up our first point, and the next assignment presents another opportunity to build on it. Yet, instead of giving the team every possible advantage, we appear to be making the task harder than it needs to be.
We should be helping our team, not unknowingly jeopardising them through our actions and inactions.
And if the club genuinely wants to turn this season around, then it must understand that the work does not begin when the referee blows the whistle. It begins in the decisions made days before the match, in the planning, the logistics, the preparation, and the little things that collectively determine whether a team arrives ready to compete.
The players have their responsibilities. The coaches have theirs. The management has its own.
Everybody must play their part. Hopefully, the boys will shake off these concerns, recover as much as possible, and deliver the goods tomorrow. They have already shown that they can fight for something under difficult circumstances, and we will be backing them to do so again.
But let us be clear: fighting against the opposition is part of football. Fighting against avoidable difficulties created by our own decisions should not be. We cannot keep making the players climb mountains and then act surprised when they arrive at the summit exhausted.
If we are going to shoot for the stars, let us at least stop shooting ourselves in the foot first.
Enyimba Enyi
