Where’s PSL leadership?

The Tendai Ndoro saga simply refuses to go away.

In May, when the SA Football Association’s (Safa) arbitrator, Advocate William Mokhari, delivered a judgment which caused havoc in the Absa Premiership, we thought we had seen the last of the matter.

But this week even more chaos prevailed in the domestic league after the South Gauteng High Court overturned Mokhari’s ruling, calling his process “invalid” and therefore restoring the Premiership standings to where they were before arbitration.

Ndoro, as we recall, was not, according to Fifa statutes, supposed to have played for three teams in one season, and Ajax Cape Town paid the price for this and was relegated.

But now the Urban Warriors have been effectively given another lifeline, with Judge Denise Fisher saying Mokhari had “no jurisdiction” to dock them points, and referring the matter back to Fifa.

Trouble here is there’s little time to restart the case, with the new Premier Soccer League season set to kick off on August 3. Starting such an arduous process from scratch, when teams have already begun recruiting for next season, would be like a kick in the teeth.

We do not necessarily blame the PSL for the mess, because it did ask Safa to refer the matter to Fifa initially. Where we blame the PSL is in its lack of urgency.

A judgment was delivered on Monday and all we got was a terse statement from the league. Yet we are less than four weeks away from kicking off a new season, with little certainty about which teams will be eligible to participate.

This is not on. Can the league please wake up and resolve this?