{"id":1776,"date":"2010-05-02T10:00:06","date_gmt":"2010-05-02T09:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/?p=1776"},"modified":"2020-10-26T13:11:48","modified_gmt":"2020-10-26T13:11:48","slug":"ball-protection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/blog\/2010\/05\/02\/ball-protection\/","title":{"rendered":"Ball Protection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>As carriers of The Ball, we realize that we have a huge responsibility to ensure that this one ball makes it all the way to South Africa. Imagine, The Ball is lost or stolen, what are we going to do? The Ball has 6000 unique signatures on it and about one hundred stamps from the 18 countries visited so far. We MUST get this one ball safely to the World Cup. <\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"captioned_image alignnone\" style=\"width: 640px\"><span id=\"attachment_1777\"  class=\"wp-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_pressconf_006.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1777 size-full\" title=\"Ball protection Benin style\" src=\"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_pressconf_006.jpg\" alt=\"Ball protection Benin style\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_pressconf_006.jpg 640w, https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_pressconf_006-150x112.jpg 150w, https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_pressconf_006-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_pressconf_006-200x150.jpg 200w, https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_pressconf_006-240x180.jpg 240w, https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_pressconf_006-320x240.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><\/span><small class=\"wp-caption-text\">Regular police officers keeping an eye on The Ball<\/small><\/div>\n<p>Starting in Togo, securing The Ball and its carriers became a priority for our partners and even a matter of national pride. &#8220;God forbid if anything happens to The Ball in our country&#8221;, might aptly describe what our hosts were thinking. This was especially understandable in Togo, where the nation had recently suffered the national tragedy of a terrorist attack on the Togolese national football team in Angola. Benin seems to have gone one step further.<\/p>\n<p>Crossing into Benin we find out that two national guard policemen have been assigned to protect The Ball and that The Ball requires a police escort at all times.<\/p>\n<div class=\"captioned_image alignnone\" style=\"width: 640px\"><span id=\"attachment_1779\"  class=\"wp-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_protection_001.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1779 size-full\" title=\"The Ball's protectors\" src=\"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_protection_001.jpg\" alt=\"The Ball's protectors\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_protection_001.jpg 640w, https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_protection_001-150x112.jpg 150w, https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_protection_001-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_protection_001-200x150.jpg 200w, https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_protection_001-240x180.jpg 240w, https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_protection_001-320x240.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><\/span><small class=\"wp-caption-text\">Andrew and The Ball&#8217;s protectors<\/small><\/div>\n<div class=\"captioned_image alignnone\" style=\"width: 640px\"><span id=\"attachment_1778\"  class=\"wp-caption\"><a href=\"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_protection_002.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1778 size-full\" title=\"A ball protector\" src=\"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_protection_002.jpg\" alt=\"A ball protector\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" srcset=\"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_protection_002.jpg 640w, https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_protection_002-150x112.jpg 150w, https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_protection_002-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_protection_002-200x150.jpg 200w, https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_protection_002-240x180.jpg 240w, https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_protection_002-320x240.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><\/span><small class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Ball requires a police escort at all times in Benin<\/small><\/div>\n<p><em>Andrew&#8217;s dad used to give him a great piece of advice regarding being in possession of a ball in a dangerous situation &#8212; &#8220;If in doubt, kick it out&#8221;, he used to say. There isn&#8217;t much chance of that happening in Benin.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As carriers of The Ball, we realize that we have a huge responsibility to ensure that this one ball makes it all the way to South Africa. Imagine, The Ball is lost or stolen, what are we going to do? The Ball has 6000 unique signatures on it and about one hundred stamps from the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[215,18,232],"tags":[59,134,135],"class_list":["post-1776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-benin-countries","category-the-ball","category-the-journey","tag-behind-the-scenes","tag-benin","tag-cotonou"],"geo":{"latitude":6.36250020000000038322696127579547464847564697265625,"longitude":2.4254999000000001529997462057508528232574462890625,"description":"Cotonou, Benin"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/04\/benin_pressconf_006.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3339,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776\/revisions\/3339"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}