Lessons to be learnt from the play-offs mess

Ihave been a football writer for over 15 years now, and I have seen and heard a lot of things but I have never been as confused as I am right now. I am mentally exhausted because of the ongoing fiasco in our football.

The court cases and the legal jargon carried in recent media releases has left me tired.

The back and forth that’s happening with the promotion playoffs is just annoying because it will delay the start of the new season and having gone for almost a year without football last year due to lockdown, one doesn’t want another delay.

But I understand why those who have decided to go to court are doing it, and I fully support their pursuit of justice.

But I wish a football solution could be found for this – we want to see teams playing on the field and not this courtroom drama we are currently being fed.

And by the look of things, this will be going on for a while because all sides involved are hellbent on exhausting every legal avenue they have available to them.

This could go as far as Fifa and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

I just wish we could jump all the other steps and go straight to CAS, which is where we are probably headed anyway.

I must admit though that when this started, I was happy that it had happened because there is a lot of inconsistency with the application of rules in the PSL disciplinary procedures and a case such as this one has long been a ticking time bomb.

I don’t think there are too may people who like the playoffs anyway.

We have called time and again for the reinstatement of the direct relegation route – two teams down, two up.

This would not, however, have prevented the current case which emanates from the application of rules.

I have read somewhere where the PSL’s acting CEO Mato Madlala, said they are learning from this and should perhaps make more means available for the DC so they can wrap up such cases quickly.

This is why I said it is good that this bomb has finally gone off – it left a big mess which the PSL has to clean up but I believe that our football will emerge from this stronger and our administrators will have learnt quite a lot.

The drama of seeing a team going to a match venue and not taking to the field was entertaining but tainted the game’s image.

I heard a colleague complaining about PSL chairman, Irvin Khoza’s silence over the matter.

I reminded him that even the clubs who are directly involved in this case are not saying much because once a matter is filed in court, then talking about it in public is frowned upon.

I am now just looking forward to seeing how all this ends but I am totally cionvinced this whole drama would make for a great sports movie script.