For some obscure reasons, the PSL appears to have adopted a dangerously self-defeating, damaging posture when dealing with crises: that of burying the head in the sand, somehow hoping everything blows away and all would be forgotten.
This has been the case since Kaizer Chiefs alerted the league last week they wouldn’t be able to field a team due to an outbreak of Covid-19 cases in their camp. As a result, Amakhosi didn’t pitch for their past two fixtures against Cape Town City and Golden Arrows, leading to all manner of speculation as to what would now happen.
Such speculation is fuelled in the main by the PSL’s lack of sincerity and vagueness of their own Covid-19 protocols. When it was drawn last year, the said protocol made it clear a rising number of cases could never be used as excuse for a club not to pitch for a fixture. This was at best shortsighted; at worst, grossly irresponsible during a pandemic.
That first division side Cape Umoya were punished with a forfeiture last year for failing to fulfil a fixture because of a high number of Covid-19 cases should have sounded an alarm for the league’s hierarchy. They should have asked themselves if, should more teams suffer a similar misfortune, they would continue with the forfeiture rule.
After all, because of the unpredictability of Covid-19 surges, postponing games even at the last moment has been a feature in other parts of the world where football leaders are able to quickly adapt to the new demands. Just yesterday, Tottenham Hotspur had their Uefa Conference League clash against France’s Rennes postponed due to an outbreak in the English club’s ranks, where eight players and five officials returned positive tests.
This number is not even half the reported 36 cases in the Chiefs camp, yet at the time of writing, we had not heard anything from the PSL, despite numerous meetings convened on the matter since last week.
We have been left to speculate as to what the reasons for this silence might be, and that speculation went into overdrive after the sudden resignation of Michael Murphy, the league’s head of legal, this week.
We have been told Murphy felt aggrieved that the league had sought legal advice elsewhere on the sustainability of the current protocol, which he helped draft, and thus jumped ship. It is understood initial legal counsel advised the league the protocol couldn’t stand constitutional examination, should it be challenged in court.
The PSL has, since the pandemic, adopted an “us and them” approach to matters of national interest, deciding to close ranks and deal with such “internally”. Chiefs, and all the other clubs affiliated to the league, are not entirely blameless in enabling perverse behaviour.
They have watched gleefully as the league turned into a recluse, serving narrow interests of individuals. Just last month, the league held an AGM with no media invited, yet not one club saw anything untoward with this. Football media remains banned from local stadiums, in a league headed by a permanently “acting” CEO. Member clubs believe it’s all rosy.
The chickens are now coming home to roost, with Chiefs not receiving feedback timeously despite writing two letters to the league ahead of their non-fixture against City. Like us in the media, even its most popular member club could not escape the PSL’s wanton contempt.
Whatever the reasons, someone needs to remind the PSL that silence is not always golden, not least when you project yourself as a professional entity.
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