Chiefs players in a huddle. Photo: Twitter @KaizerChiefs
Chiefs chairman: PSL’s decision after Covid outbreak left us ‘dumbfounded’
Kaizer Motaung says he hopes ‘sanity and rationality’ will prevail in the wake of the PSL’s controversial decision after a Covid-19 outbreak.
Chiefs players in a huddle. Photo: Twitter @KaizerChiefs
Towards the end of 2021, Chiefs took an emergency decision to temporarily close the club’s headquarters in Naturena in the wake of a severe Covid-19 outbreak that affected more than 35 employees as it swept through the camp in early December.
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As a result, Chiefs were unable to fulfil their fixtures against Cape Town City and Golden Arrows, but were eventually able to put a team together to play Sekhukhune United at the FNB Stadium recently.
The league hadn’t officially commented on Chiefs’ initial request for all their DStv Premiership fixtures in December to be postponed, while there’d been no word over whether the two missed matches would be re-scheduled.
Eventually, the PSL recently confirmed that because Chiefs could not prove that there were “exceptional circumstances” to have matches postponed approved, that request was declined.
The PSL will next host a press conference on 5 January 2022 to address the saga, and will not make any further comment until then.
In an end-of-year message on the Chiefs website, Kaizer Chiefs chairperson Kaizer Motaung addressed this matter once again.
“The PSL continues to be one of the best leagues on the continent because of how professionally it is run. We continue to be proud of the work done by all involved.
“Our recent experience that saw us not allowed to postpone matches after the Covid-19 attack has still left us dumbfounded. This has also brought a lot of attention on the running of the league and we have to ensure that we do not let this situation tarnish the good image of the organisation.
“We do hope sanity and rationality will prevail at the end of the day and the PSL continues to be an example to many leagues in the world. We also need to learn from the examples of other top leagues in the world.
“May all our colleagues enjoy the rest and work even harder in 2022.”
Chiefs have said they will appeal against the PSL’s decision
Previously, Chiefs responded quickly to state that there were legitimate medical reasons for their request, hinting that these certainly should be regarded as “exceptional circumstances”.
“Initially, at our first time of writing to the league, we had 31 positive cases, which included a majority of players as well as members of the technical team. As a double consequence of the close contact nature of our environment and the increased levels in contagiousness of the Omicron variant, these numbers increased steadily in the next week. Additional rounds of testing revealed a rise to 36, followed by 48 and then 52 positive diagnoses from the subsequent two weeks’ round of testing.
“This increase in numbers indicates that our decision to close our headquarters was a justified and prudent attempt to protect even more people both within and outside our camp from being affected, and, importantly, fell within the established Department of Health protocols for containing an outbreak of Covid.
“We are studying the feedback and will engage our legal department with the view of appealing this unjustifiable decision through the football mother body, the South African Football Association or the Dispute Resolution Committee.”
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