29th African Cup of Nations-Referee Camille makes good impression |01 February 2013

So far, Camille has taken charge of one match and has been the fourth official of another at the ongoing 29th Can taking place in South Africa.

Camille, 37, was named the central referee for the January 25 group C match between Ethiopia and Burkina Faso.

He rightly sent off Burkina Faso goalkeeper Abdoulaye Soulama on the hour mark for handling the ball from outside his penalty area. Ten-man Burkina Faso still won the match 4-0 to end their 18-match winless run at the African Cup of Nations.

The Seychellois was the fourth official in the Wednesday January 30 group D incident-filled encounter between Togo and Tunisia which ended in a 1-1 draw. The draw helped Togo progress to the quarterfinals for the first time.

The quarterfinals are slated from this weekend. Hosts South Africa will meet Mali in Durban on Saturday and on the same day, Ghana will clash with Cape Verde at Nelson Mandela Bay.

On Sunday, last year’s losing finalists Ivory Coast will clash with Nigeria in Rustenburg and Burkina Faso will meet Togo in Mbombela.

The quarterfinal winners will progress to the semifinals on Wednesday February 6 in Durban and Mbombela. The bronze medal match between the losing semifinalists is on Saturday February 9 in Nelson Mandela Bay and the final in Johannesburg the following day.

It is not known if Camille will take charge of matches in the quarterfinal or if he will work as fourth official.

Camille is in his third year as a Fédération Internationale de Football Association (Fifa) referee and prior to officiating in the ongoing African Nations Cup he had put on some good showing in the eight international matches he took charge of last year.

Meanwhile, the Confederation of African Football (Caf) has confirmed that three of the 18 referees – Mali's Koman Coulibaly, Egypt’s Ghead Grisha and Madagascar’s Hamada Nampiandraza – have been sent home from Can 2013 after the completion of the group stage.

Coulibaly took charge of the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations final and has officiated at seven Cans. The 42-year-old’s handling of hosts South Africa's group A match against Angola came in for widespread media criticism for a series of debatable calls.

Egyptian referee Ghead Grisha awarded a highly controversial penalty to Zambia in last Friday's group C clash against Nigeria and the Nigeria Football Federation accused him of "making one of the worst decisions in the history of football" and subsequently dispatched a strongly-worded protest to the Confederation of African Football.

“Grisha has been sent home. He will have no further action at this Nations Cup. His decisions did not tally with best practices of the refereeing profession and we would not allow anyone to start re-writing the rules of the game here,” said a Caf official.

Malagasy official Hamada Nampiandraza is the third referee heading home. He appeared to lose all sense of time during Togo's group D match against Algeria on Saturday after stopping the match in the 86th minute when a goal began to lean. The match was held up for 13 minutes while the post was repaired but when play resumed, instead of playing the last four minutes plus stoppage time, he played 16 more minutes – adding how long it took to fix the goal to the actual playing time.
 
The situation could have led to deep embarrassment for CAF and the match possibly needing to be replayed had a decisive goal been scored in the time added on by mistake. In the event, Togo, already 1-0 ahead, scored a second goal soon after play had restarted.

G. G.