Ghana’s female national team have sparked a massive gender cheating row by claiming that Equatorial Guinea are playing in the ongoing African Women Championship (AWC) in South Africa with men.

Two Black Queens players Diana Ankomah and captain Florence Okoe claim Equatorial Guinea used three men during their final Group B game on Monday. Cameroon has filed an official complaint against Equatorial Guinea for similar age gender claims.

The Confederation of African Football (Caf) is refusing to comment on the issue as this is the second tournament in a row that the Guineans have been accused of gender cheating. Salimata Simpore, Bilguisa Simpore and team captain Genoveva Ayonmang were in 2008 suspected to be boys.

Indeed, against Ghana, both Simpore and Ayonmang were looking too strong for their opponents, with the latter’s goal for her team’s second of the game a shot any male goalkeeper could have found difficult stopping.

Black Queens’ team captain Florence Okoe said no one can make her yield in her belief that Simpore was “a boy playing in a girls’ game’. “It is not as if we are throwing sour grapes, just because we have lost. Rather, this is the fact and it is up to the organisers to do something about this. It is not good for African women football,” she said.

Diana Ankomah, says despite their disappointing finish, they were only feeling unhappy with the gender opposition. Ankomah re-echoed the claim that at least two of Equatorial Guinea’s players were not girls. “To lose a football game is not something we don’t know how to take, that is now normal for us as footballers,” Diana Ankomah told NAN.

“But losing to an unequal opposition like in this case of Equatorial Guinea is painful. “You only need to have physical contact with them to know this, and we can tell from what happened most times during the match,” she said.

The allegation had reverberated during the last edition of the competition as hosts Equatorial Guinea romped to the title, with Nigeria one of two countries to raise a complaint then.

The competition organisers, the Confederation of African Football (CAF), had, however, waved the allegation then, saying its investigation revealed that the ‘boys’ were really girls. Efforts to get the competition organisers’ comment on the allegation yielded no fruit, as the game’s Match Commissioner, Souaadatou Kalkaba, told NAN she was not competent to speak on the issue.

Hours after their exit from the on-going tournament in South Africa, the Black Queens are feeling their loss in their final match was not ‘ordinary’. Ghana lost 3-1 to Equatorial Guinea on Monday evening at Daveyton’s Sinaba Stadium in Johannesburg to crash out of the continental tournament

The Ghanaians had needed a win to progress from Group B to the semi-finals, but the second match day’s 1-2 loss to Cameroon had put them in a difficult position.

They only ended third in their group following their opening match’s 2-1 win over Algeria, just a step above their fourth place finish from the same group at the 2008 edition.