By S. Siapha Mulbah
The 2022-2023 edition of the National County Sports Meet appears as a season of retention as Nimba as shown supremacy over Lofa County in the grand Final.
Nimba who defended her title in the football category did not disappoint her supporters in the grand final match last evening at the Samuel Kanyon Doe Sports Complex in Paynesville City.
From an 18 minutes lead for Lofa County by Pascal Harris, the Wologizi side could not withstand the pressure poured on them from the tournament’s defending champion.
In past years, Nimba County had made its six wins as the highest carrier of the country’s biggest Sporting tournament.
Emmanuel Sieh’s cancellation of the first goal plus an additional netting were unique taking Nimba through to win the first half 2-1 in favor of the winning team. It ended at a fulltime result Lofa 2-3 Nimba.
Though it was a competitive final in the County Meet this year, Nimba still stood as the giant of the competition by winning her qualifier group leader in the last biggest game of the tournament.
Both finalists emerged as winners and runner-ups of group ‘C’ in the preliminary stage of the event that was hosted in Lofa County at the Voinjama Stadium.
According to pundits who closely followed the competition, Lofa had a better chance to win the football category if they were only to allow Bomi who begged for a draw to eliminate Nimba in the bush.
However, despite Lofa losing the final will not be degraded for the tremendous impact made in the just ended County Sports Meet.
Even Deputy Youth and Sports Minister Andy Quamie lauded the two finalists in the competition during a pre match conference at the Samuel Kanyon Doe Sports Gymnasium last Saturday.
He said it has not been easy to see two counties really dominating the County Meet to an extent that the third place basketball game had the same fixture with football and kickball.
“The two football finalists this year are counties that demonstrated very good sportsmanship. They reached football and kickball finals and also basketball semifinals which had been very rare over years,” Quamie said.
